[pca] Option --minimal questions

[Brookins, Neil (Philadelphia)]

1) I understand that --minimal option is normally designed to be used with either missingr or missingrs operands.
I've tested --minimal option with the "missing" operand and its having some effect, but it's not clear to me what it's doing?
Is the behaviour of --minimal defined for use case that is omitting  r and s?

2) When using the --list or --listhtml options, I see that the header displays "List: missing" where "missing" is the operand. This is useful to the viewer of the list to see what operand was invoked. However, the option --minimal is not showing up in the header anywhere. So, If I am viewing the list I can't easily tell if the list is latest version or minimal. Should the designation of latest vs. minimal be visible in the list output? One idea is to change the "CR" in the header to say either "MR" or "LR" for Minimal Release, or Latest Release, respectively.

3) I found a use case that leads to installing a patch which is immediately overwritten with a newer patch. This shouldn't break anything, but its less than optimal.
Run:  PCA -l --minimal missingrs  on a host that has VTS 7.0 patch set 10 or earlier.
I see that patch 146861-01 is listed to be installed, then 147935-01 is listed to be installed later in the list.
I understand that the former patch is in the recommended list.
And the latter patch is in the security list.
According to the "Patches accumulated and obsoleted by this patch" section for the latter patch, it lists the former patch.
I would have expected that PCA would check each patch being added to the list and remove the earlier ones from the list that are obsoleted by later patches to be installed. Maybe this checking is not being done? It would be a useful feature to speed up patching by not installing patches that should be skipped.  This check can be automated using the information provided in the patchdiag.xref.

$ egrep '^146861|^147446|^147935' patchdiag.xref
146861|01|Jun/06/11|R|S|O|  |Unbundled|sparc;|SUNWvtss:7.0,REV=2008.02.07.18.38;SUNWvts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;SUNWvtsts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;|Obsoleted by: 147446-01 SunVTS 7.0: Patch Set 11
147446|01|Sep/22/11| |S|O|  |Unbundled|sparc;|SUNWvtss:7.0,REV=2008.02.07.18.38;SUNWvts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;SUNWvtsts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;|Obsoleted by: 147935-01 SunVTS 7.0: Patch Set 12
147935|01|Nov/17/11| |S| |  |Unbundled|sparc;|SUNWvtss:7.0,REV=2008.02.07.18.38;SUNWvts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;SUNWvtsts:7.0,REV=2008.02.15.13.31;|SunVTS 7.0 Patch Set 13

Neil G. Brookins
Identity and Authentication Solutions - IT Global Solutions
Towers Watson
1500 Market Street | Philadelphia, PA 19102
Phone: +1 215 246 6046
neil.brookins at towerswatson.com<mailto:neil.brookins at towerswatson.com>




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