Should yum update <package-name> resolve dependencies?

Question

I have foo-1.1 and foo-devel-1.1 both installed. Now I update my repo with foo-1.2 and foo-devel-1.2. After yum clean metadata, I simply type yum update, no problem. I get both foo-1.2 and foo-devel-1.2 reported as ready to update.

However, if I type yum update foo-devel the related foo dependency is not reported as ready to update. Is this correct behavior? How do I get the behavior I'm expecting? Which is that all dependencies resolve and update when a package name is specified as an argument to yum update.

$rpm -q yum

yum-3.2.29-43.el6_5.noarch

Thanks for any info!

-Fin

Answer 1

When updating all packages

yum update will update any packages that have a newer version available, and take care of dependencies.

From the manual page man yum:

While updating packages, yum will ensure that all dependencies are satisfied.

One thing to bear in mind is that while a package may have an update available, that does not mean that a dependency of that package has been updated too - they are after all seperate packages.

When updating a specific package

From the manual: If one or more packages or package globs are specified, Yum will only update the listed packages. This seems to imply that if foo-devel requires foo, and you specify to update only foo-devel, then yum won't update foo to a newer version (unless foo-devel specifically requires the newer version).