Bug 1029392

Summary:	Replace the terminology "uninstallable provider" with something understandable
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE Distribution	Reporter:	Stefan Knorr <sknorr>
Component:	libzypp	Assignee:	E-mail List <zypp-maintainers>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P3 - Medium	CC:	astieger
Version:	Leap 15.0
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Stefan Knorr 2017-03-14 18:15:40 UTC

When there are package conflicts, Zypper and YaST often complain about "uninstallable providers". Even after five years of using SUSE-based distributions I have NO CLUE what this means.
(What exactly is the "provider" here? And why exactly is it "uninstallable" -- I am trying to install something here?)

Judging by e.g. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/128110 , I am not the only one.

Could this message be rephrased in an understandable way?

[And please don't ask for proposal before paraphrasing what this means -- when I said I still had no clue, that is exactly what I meant.]

Quoting the example message from StackExchange:

> Problem: foo-tools requires foo-lib, but this requirement cannot be provided
>   uninstallable providers: foo-lib.7.31.13.x86_64
> Solution 1: do not install foo-tools
> Solution 2: break foo-tools by ignoring some of its dependencies

Comment 1 Andreas Stieger 2017-03-14 18:58:22 UTC

For the installation of foo-tools the resolvable items foo-lib is required. foo-lib is provided by the specific package foo-lib.7.31.13.x86_64 foo-lib itself cannot be installed for other reasons.

Comment 2 Stefan Knorr 2017-03-14 19:40:34 UTC

Sorry for the harsh phrasing before.

OK, so this sounds like:
(1) "The dependency foo-tools is available but not all of its dependencies are available."
(2) "The dependency foo-tools is available but not compatible."

Or are there other cases that are also subsumed under this error message? Am I misunderstanding something?


Anyway, in regular usage, the word "uninstall" means "removal of something installed" which is where part of my confusion came from. Even the very forced phrasing "not-installable" would seem like a better option.

Comment 3 Andreas Stieger 2017-03-14 20:54:46 UTC

It's actually a bit more:

foo-tools was explicitly requested to be installed.
foo-tools needs the capability (not package) foo-lib, which is provided by foo-lib-1.2.3.
But the package foo-lib-1.2.3 cannot be installed due to another dependency error.

"uninstallable" means "not installable" in this instance.

Comment 4 Michael Andres 2017-03-15 07:30:12 UTC

There was similar trouble with --installed-only/--uninstalled-only which is meanwhile --not-installed-only. We should try to avoid using 'uninstall' unless it actually means 'remove'.

Comment 5 Tomáš Chvátal 2018-04-17 14:05:57 UTC

This is automated batch bugzilla cleanup.

The openSUSE 42.2 changed to end-of-life (EOL [1]) status. As such
it is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any
further security or bug fix updates.
As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
openSUSE, or you can still observe it under openSUSE Leap 15.0, please
feel free to reopen this bug against that version (see the "Version"
component in the bug fields), or alternatively open
a new ticket.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed
during the lifetime of the release.

[1] https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime

Comment 6 Stefan Knorr 2018-04-17 14:49:03 UTC

I don't think this has been fixed - reopening.

Comment 7 Michael Andres 2018-04-17 15:19:02 UTC

Sorry I missed this. Fixed in libzypp-17.3.1.

Comment 8 Stefan Knorr 2018-04-17 15:37:21 UTC

Oh! Thanks, good stuff! -> setting to fixed then instead.