Changes/Set skip if unavailable default to false

Set skip_if_unavailable default to false

Summary

Dnf team wants to change a default setting for the repo option skip_if_unavailable to FALSE.

Owner

• Name: Jaroslav Mracek
• Email: jmracek@redhat.com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 31
• Last updated: 2019-04-23
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Dnf team wants to change a default setting for the repo option skip_if_unavailable to FALSE. The option is responsible for behavior when metadata of a repository is unavailable. When it is set to false, it will stop on the first unavailable repository with raising an error. The default behavior could be overwritten by a configuration of each repository or in dnf by configuration in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf.

The behavior is not new, because it was used already by YUM, and the behavior is really essential because all Fedora ropos are already shipped with skip_if_unavailable=FALSE.

The change will be applied in libdnf library, and the changed behavior will be visible for all direct and indirect users of the library: dnf, microdnf, PackageKit, ... .

Benefit to Fedora

It should provide a better security because some Important updates from third-party repositories could be present in temporary unavailable repository, but user can easily overlook it during dnf update because the issue is reported as a warning.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Backport the following upstream pull requests into the DNF stack on Fedora: https://github.com/rpm-software-management/libdnf/pull/701

• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
  • List of deliverables: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Policies and guidelines: N/A
• Trademark approval: not needed for this Change

Upgrade/compatibility impact

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

How To Test

Edit .repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/* and set an url that is not accessible.

Case 1: No skip_if_unavailable in the repo file, in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf or overwritten from commandline using --setopt. Any command that requires available repositories like dnf repoquery will fail due to an error Error: Failed to synchronize cache for repo '<repo_ID>'

Case 2: Set skip_if_unavailable=true in the repo file. Any command that requires available repositories like dnf repoquery will not fail due to missing metadata of the <repo_id>

User Experience

Broken repositories are recognized early, enabling the users to act upon them by double-checking their repository configuration or filing bugs, instead of assuming no upgrades are available.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)

The change requires a merge and a release of the pull-request https://github.com/rpm-software-management/libdnf/pull/701

• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Should be delivered before 2019-07-24.

• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No

No

• Blocks product? product

No

Documentation

https://dnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/conf_ref.html

Update for documentation: https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf/pull/1358