https://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/1007.1021/Collected HN comments and submissions linking this paper.enMon, 02 Nov 2026 11:16:22 GMThttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4455640urn:hackerpapers:mention:1007.1021:4455640Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:14:45 GMT<p>Package upgrades are an example of SAT (the satisfiability problem)[1]. Apt and yum don&#x27;t recognize this result and instead use a bunch of ad hoc rules. These often fail, when they could succeed. SAT will always find the answer, eventually, if there is one. Now the issue is that SAT is NP-complete, so it could run for a very long time before it finds a solution. But there are very good solvers which &quot;most of the time&quot; (meaning, basically always) find a solution in a short time. They are also open source projects[2]. There&#x27;s been an existence proof (zypper) that using a standard SAT solver is…</p><p><a href="https://hackerpaper.kaipfister.de/p/1007.1021/">Paper and discussion history</a>. A mention is not an endorsement.</p>cs.LO