Smart Package Manager: a better mousetrap (Linux.com)
Posted Jul 15, 2006 8:27 UTC (Sat) by
amacater (subscriber, #790)
In reply to:
Smart Package Manager: a better mousetrap (Linux.com) by quintesse
Parent article:
Smart Package Manager: a better mousetrap (Linux.com)
"You want to eat hippopotamus, you got to pay the freight" In my opinion,
the reason apt works for Debian and Ubuntu and doesn't work for the RPM
based distributions is two fold: 1) It was grafted on 2) Most other
distributions didn't pay enough attention to dependency matrices and are
suffering now. Debian packagers are constrained to fit any new package into
an existing tightly controlled system and to take note of interdependencies
in order to get the package into the distribution. A relatively small update
to a system library can thus result in a huge number of changes across the
distribution == lots of updates to lots of packages but should result in
internal consistency and installability. Don't like installing packages
"raw" with dpkg and dselect: develop apt: don't like apt, develop aptitude:
want a gui - develop synaptics and now adept. Far too many package
managers/guis to deal with packages but they build on each other and,
crucially, on a tightly controlled list of dependencies which feeds them
all. The other factor is that, if I need virtually any application, I can
download it from Debian and know it will work without me having to dig
around third party repositories to find some library or other - the
dependencies are pulled in at the same time.
(
Log in to post comments)
