When trying to install steam yesterday with rpm-ostree install steam, I got depency problems with a package. This is something that happens regularly when trying to install steam in OSTree based systems from what I can find (and when I tried Fedora Silverblue / Kinoite in the past).
My question is, do dependency problems like this prevent my system from downloading an updated image from upstream (or will it prevent downloads in the future)? Thanks for any answers!
With dependency issues, an rpm-ostree upgrade would download the latest version of the OSTree, but result in errors, and not create a new deployment AFAIK.
You could try solving the dependency issues, by posting some outputs here, or try the Flatpak version of Steam (there are reports that it should be working).
These dependency issues can happen occasionally, often with 3rd party packages that are not built and delivered by the Fedora project (i.e. coming from RPMFusion etc.)
Sometimes this is just a timing issue in terms of new dependencies being added to a package, but not yet available in Fedora or elsewhere. Other times it can be an actual packaging bug.
If you can provide the output of the following:
rpm-ostree status
rpm-ostree install steam
…it may be possible to better understand the issue.
Oh I already got it installed. Installed this morning without issues. This was mostly posted for me to know if layering an often problematic package (such as steam) could prevent updates from being downloaded to my system, which I guess it does? I am still not sure though. The docs say that waiting for a new compose (I am guessing this means ‘update’ in layman’s terms) solves the “trying to layer a package and getting dependency problems” issue, but it’s not clear when the case is “a package I have is already layered and I want to update the system, does it update seamlessly or not?”. That’s what I would like to know.
Link to the docs: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-kinoite/troubleshooting/#_forbidden_base_package_replacements
Edit1: Installed steam through rpm-ostree this morning, no issues, though the one I found yesterday was something about pipewire IIRC.
On Silverblue (so GNOME Desktop), with automatic updates in GNOME Software enabled, a new deployment takes place on a (almost) daily basis. The user becomes aware of the new deployment either by running rpm-ostree status, or after rebooting. I expect that Kinoite with Discover works in a similar way.
I never had an automatic update with dependency issues between a layered package and a new OSTree image, so I don’t know if GNOME Software or Discover notifies the user about such issues. Nevertheless, one can periodically check on the latest deployment available on the system to see if there were failed deployments.
I am pretty sure that a failed deployment for the reasons mentioned won’t prevent future upgrade attempts though.