[pca] dependency checking of path list file

[Martin Paul]

Fredrich Maney wrote:
> 'pca.pl --install patchlist.txt' only tries to install the patches
> listed in patchlist.txt, not any of the dependencies of those patches
> and also seems to ignore whether the patch is appropriate for the 
> platform in question, but blindly tries to install every patch in the
> patchlist.txt on the system.

That behaviour depends on whether you list only patch IDs or full patch 
IDs plus revisions in patchlist.txt. In the first case, dependencies 
will be resolved, in the second case they won't. E.g.:

$ pca -l 119059 119254 119313
...
Patch  IR   CR RSB Age Synopsis
------ -- - -- --- --- ---------------------------------------------
119254 52 < 76 RS-  43 SunOS 5.10: Install and Patch Utilities Patch
119059 40 < 56 RS-  47 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch
138217 -- < 01 R-- 694 SunOS 5.10: svccfg & svcprop patch
140899 -- < 01 R-- 524 SunOS 5.10: [ir].manifest patch
119313 19 < 38 ---  77 SunOS 5.10: WBEM Patch

$ pca -l 119059-56 119254-76 119313-38
...
Patch  IR   CR RSB Age Synopsis
------ -- - -- --- --- ---------------------------------------------
119059 40 < 56 RS-  47 X11 6.6.2: Xsun patch
119254 52 < 76 RS-  43 SunOS 5.10: Install and Patch Utilities Patch
119313 19 < 38 ---  77 SunOS 5.10: WBEM Patch

The reason for this difference is that the patchdiag.xref file only 
includes information about the most recent revision of a patch, so PCA 
can't resolve dependencies for non-current revisions. There's not even a 
guarantee that the synopsis is correct, or that a certain revision 
exists. The information is only included in the "patchinfo" file in the 
patch ZIP file, which PCA can't use.

Theoretically, PCA could check whether all of the specified revisions 
are current revisions, and do dependency analysis then. That would be a 
rare case, though (and you could just leave off the revisions to get the 
same result), so it doesn't make sense.

So PCA's paradigm is: If the user specifies exact patch revisions, it 
will assume that the user knows what he does and wants to install those 
patches in exactly this order. If there are dependencies, the user will 
have to resolve those manually and feed an appropriate list to PCA.

Hope that helps,

Martin.