I am having some issues with cloning security errata between channels and I am interested to know if others have seen this.

The process I follow is to clone security errata out of a main channel that syncs all packages nightly. From there, I clone the security channel into child software channels of systems at different points of release, eg.

Step 1. spacewalk-clone-by-date (security only) from the 'main' channel, to a 'security only' errata channel.
Step 2. Sync errata/packages from 'security only' channel to the security child channels, let's call them 'security child'.

This all works well, except Step 2 is showing inconsistent results. I haven't found a reliable way to clone from a base channel directly into a child channel using spacewalk-clone-by-date (ie. 'main' -> 'security child') so I have had to come up with alternatives.

The problem is, the alternatives seem to result in a huge range of variance when syncing the errata/packages between channels, eg.

'security only' channel after spacewalk-clone-by-date (security only) from 'main'
734 Errata, 7045 Packages

Adding errata/packages to 'security child' from 'security only' using the Satellite/Spacewalk web interface:
734 Errata, 5942 Packages

Adding errata/packages to 'security child' from 'security only' using spacecmd 'softwarechannel_adderrata':
729 Errata, 5893 Packages

I appreciate that 'spacecmd' isn't really supported, so for the example using the web interface I compared the packages in both channels ('security only' and 'security child'). There were several hundred packages listed that didn't have any associated errata, so I can only assume that they were dependencies dragged in for errata related packages.. so my question is.. why does the Satellite/Spacewalk web interface ignore these packages for errata when spacewalk-clone-by-date determines they are required?

I notice that spacewalk-clone-by-date has '--skip_depsolve' which is 'Not recommended' which makes me wonder why the add errata feature of the web interface (and spacecmd) appear to behave without depsolve.