[geeks] Alpha check

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, May 17, 2001 at 04:27:55PM -0700, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> David Cantrell wrote:
>
> > [Debian's package management being so much more comprehensive than
> >  Redhat's]
>
> Erm, no, it's not "so much more comprehensive" than Red Hat's, from
> everything that I've been able to figure out.  I know the
> user/administrator side of RPM inside and out.  I'm getting into dpkg,
> but it has some rather large gaps in functionality.

I'd like to know what you think is missing.  It supports all the
dependencies you need, with post- and pre- installation and deinstallation
scripts.  It can figure out when a package has been broken and so needs
reinstallation.  It makes downgrading *much* easier (very useful when
you want to try out things like new X servers which turn out to not
work).  It does, of course, support signing of packages.  Coming out-of-
the-box with *working* support for fetching packages and all their
dependencies from the network is a god-send.

But I really meant by 'more comprehensive' that even the kernel and any
loadable modules are kept in the package management system, and have
dependency information.  If you want to use a custom kernel without
having to fart around with building packages for it, then you are
running the risk of the package manager stomping all over it, just like
if you compile something and put it in /usr/bin yourself.

>                                                      From chatting with
> the people I know who hack frontends for both RPM and dpkg, dpkg seems
> to have the right concepts, but they completely fubar the
> implementation.

I'll agree that dpkg has an ugly interface, but then rpm's isn't exactly
stellar.  I think they're both shit.  Oh, and I avoid that ghastly
monstrosity that is dselect altogether.  But there is no rpm equivalent of
it so that's a non-issue.

>                  RPM, on the other hand, doesn't have the concepts quite
> right, but their implementation is far superior.
> Got any specifics as to what you think dpkg/apt can do better than
> rpm/up2date ?

Sure.  apt works, up2date doesn't (it has *always* coredumped on me).
No doubt up2date could have been fixed on my boxes by changing some
libraries, but that should have been done for me when up2date was installed.

Oh, and there's no equivalent of apt-get dist-upgrade.  Which is very
useful indeed.

-- 
David Cantrell | cthulhu at unixbeard.net | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/

  Rip, Mix, Burn, unless you're using our "most advanced operating system
   in the world" which we decided to release incomplete just for a laugh