[pca] Obsolete Patches

[Martin Paul]

deniz rende wrote:
> Is there any way to tell pca to download the newer patches? or do I have to
> go back to my file and manually edit and change patch number x with patch
> number y and download them again?

When you ask pca to list a certain patch (by specifying its ID), it will 
list that patch even if it's obsoleted. So, yes, if you want a 
self-maintained list of patches to install, you might have to check for 
patch obsoletions and replace the affected patch in the list if needed. 
This is not always a necessity, though. It's no problem to install 
obsoleted patches; if you put a certain patch (or even revisions of a 
patch) on your list, you might be interested in a certain fix. Often 
small patches are obsoleted by huge kernel patches and you probably 
don't want automatic obsoletion in such a case.

Basically you have two options when patching:

Install all patches. This is the paradigm that pca follows, that's why 
it lists all missing patches by default. You can restrict this to all 
"Security" patches, if needed.

Install a certain, self-defined set of patches. pca will help you there, 
too, but it's on you to come up with the list of patches you want/need.

The advantage of the first method is that OS+all patches is a setup 
which is tested by Sun, while it's impossible to test systems with all 
possible combinations of installed and missing patches. Patches often 
have side-effects which might cause problems then.

Hope that helps,

Martin.