Tell yum to install the exact version of my package dependencies

Question

I'd like to install a package named pA.

• Package pA-1.0.0-0 depends on package pB-1.0.0-0.
• On a yum repository, one can find both pB-1.0.0-0 and pB-1.1.0-0.
• Package pA-1.0.0-0 is not compatible with pB-1.1.0-0, and this information is not mentioned in the RPM of pA because pB-1.1.0-0 did not exist back when pA was packaged.

This is a problem when trying to install pA with yum:

$ yum localinstall pA-1.0.0-0.el7.x86_64.rpm
...
Resolving Dependencies
-> Processing Dependency: pB >= 1.0.0 for package: pA-1.0.0-0.el7.x86_64
--> Package pB.x86_64 0:1.1.0-0.el7 will be installed # <-- version 1.1! ho no!

Is there a command line option in yum to ask it to install the specific version demanded for its dependencies?
^{Specifically here, to install pA-1.0.0-0.el7.x86_64 rather than pA-1.1.0-0.el7.x86_64.}

Note: I cannot deal with pA's dependencies by hand: in my real scenario, there is countless dependencies I wouldn't install separately with rpm.

Answer 1

There's no way to do directly what you're asking, but you can install a specific version of the dependency before installing your primary package:

yum install pB-1.0.0-0
yum install pA

To prevent pB from being upgraded when updating the rest of the system, you can use the versionlock plugin for yum:

yum install yum-plugin-versionlock
yum versionlock pB-*

This will lock the version of pB at whatever was installed when the lock was put in place. See How to restrict yum to install or upgrade a package to a fixed specific package version?

Edit: If you don't want to/can't deal with manual installation of the dependencies in their required versions, you can add the list of deps and their versions to /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/versionlock.list to ensure specific versions get installed when you install pA.