I am trying to set up a server (FC1) with yum, because the host pretty much did not install any useful software on it, and I don't want to have to mess with dependencies. I finally whittled away most of yum's dependencies, and their depencencies, but now I am stuck on rpm-python. It is of course dependent on rpm, which is in turn dependent on an old version of popt (Plesk uses a newer version of popt). My guess here is that I can do one of two things:

1. Force an install of the old version of popt to satisfy the dependencies for rpm-python. I am not quite sure how to do this, and if it is a good idea since Plesk depends on this version of popt (it has a .swsoft file extension - so it might be custom)
2. Compile rpm-python from source, which I can't seem to find anywhere, so if anyone has it I'd be grateful

Please go easy on me I'm a Linux newb :-p

I used the --exclude option and it appears as though the packages are installing (in the process of downloading now but it got past the dependencies stage). I used

yum --exclude=python-devel update

hope it helps