[SOLVED] FC17: dependency problem with ruby packages running Software Update today

[Geek McBean]

I'm running FC17 which is an in-place upgrade of FC15, been fine since upgrading soon after the release of FC17. Software Update imformed me this morning that a number of packages needed updating so I ran the update only to have it fail. I tracked it down to 3 ruby packages causing the problem (all the other 40+ updates worked fine).

It seems that I still have some FC15 ruby packages installed that are dependent on older versions of the three packages that are failing to update. There follows the relevant output of yum upgrade:

================================================== ===============================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================== ===============================================
Updating:
ruby x86_64 1.9.3.194-11.fc17 updates 999 k
ruby-irb noarch 1.9.3.194-11.fc17 updates 71 k
ruby-libs x86_64 1.9.3.194-11.fc17 updates 2.5 M

Transaction Summary
================================================== ===============================================
Upgrade 3 Packages

Total size: 3.5 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running Transaction Check
ERROR with transaction check vs depsolve:
ruby-irb = 1.8.7.358-1.fc15 is needed by (installed) ruby-rdoc-1.8.7.358-1.fc15.noarch
ruby(abi) = 1.8 is needed by (installed) rubyripper-0.6.0-1.fc15.noarch
Please report this error in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bu...&component=yum
** Found 7 pre-existing rpmdb problem(s), 'yum check' output follows:
ruby-cairo-1.10.2-1.fc15.x86_64 has missing requires of rubygem-cairo = ('0', '1.10.2', '1.fc15')
ruby-gettext-package-2.1.0-3.fc15.noarch has missing requires of rubygem-gettext = ('0', '2.1.0', '3.fc15')
ruby-gtk2-1.0.3-2.fc15.x86_64 has missing requires of rubygem-gtk2 = ('0', '1.0.3', '2.fc15')
ruby-locale-2.0.5-2.fc15.1.noarch has missing requires of rubygem-locale = ('0', '2.0.5', '2.fc15.1')
ruby-pango-1.0.3-1.fc15.x86_64 has missing requires of rubygem-pango = ('0', '1.0.3', '1.fc15')
ruby-rdoc-1.8.7.358-1.fc15.noarch has missing requires of ruby-irb = ('0', '1.8.7.358', '1.fc15')
rubyripper-0.6.0-1.fc15.noarch has missing requires of ruby(abi) = ('0', '1.8', None)
Your transaction was saved, rerun it with:
yum load-transaction /tmp/yum_save_tx.2012-06-11.16-50.uP3X8s.yumtx

Any ideas? I know it says that I should report this as a bug but I thought I'd ask here first. I've googled and serached the forum and not found anything similar.

[Geek McBean]

I think I've fixed this and, fingers crossed, not broken anything

It seems that the offending packages rubbyripper & ruby-rdoc do not appear in the F17 repos so on discovering this I checked if anything significant depended on them with:

rpm -q --whatrequires rubyripper

Being fairly satisfied that nothing important was using these packages (or the other F15 ruby packages listed by yum as being problems in the rpmdb) I simply removed the lot.

Nothing has exploded...so far...

[caliban]

Can I safely yum erase ruby without removing dependencies needed in vim or firefox etc.? It seems to be of no use to me and take up space.
thanks, caliban (newbie)