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It's a Cycle of Life Thing: Managing Linux Releases (O'ReillyNet)
The O'ReillyNet
explores an old idea for improving enterprise Linux adoption by
separating applications from the core OS. "The release of the 2.4
series kernel made a lot more functionality available to developers, and
the Linux community has taken advantage of it with wild abandon. With the
release of Red Hat 7.3 (and SuSE 8.0, and most other Linux distributions
from about mid-2001), I noticed a sudden bump in the number of applications
available and a radical change in the dependencies in any given
distribution, release after release."
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Good point Posted Mar 18, 2003 17:03 UTC (Tue) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link] The author is true to point the problems of package numbers and dependencies. I dream from time to time of a complete dependency tree to show how and why is one rpm dependant on another.I've installed some RedHat servers recently, and i found quite annoying to have to remove about 100 packages after a minimal install to really get something close of what I need. I must say that I also hate to have too many things installed on any computer, and when I try to remove something, like python, I get : pythonXXX.rpm is required by XXXX1 then try to remove XXXX1 XXXX1 is required by XXXX2 try to remove XXXX2 XXXX2 is required by XXXX3 so try to remove XXXX3 as well, I don't feel a need for all those things : XXXX3 is required by YYYY Hey, I want to keep YYYY, so I must keep all the other things I don't need, don't use, don't like. And I'm not really sure it is really helpfull in the end. This kind of things remind me of Microsoft, when removing outlook would break IE, or removing Windows Media Player would break the explorer. Really, making things simpler would make things better. For that knowing the tree of dependencies and cutting some branches on it would bring much. I hope someone will do it one day. But better than cutting branches would have been to control earlier the growth of the tree, it is I think a point of the article, and I agree with that.
Red Hat is only making bogus dependencies worse Posted Mar 18, 2003 18:41 UTC (Tue) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link] If I have an application that doesn't depend on Perl *at all*, but have an example Perl script in a %doc directive, then RHL8.0 will create a bogus Perl dependency for the package... Red Hat thinks that's a good thing.See <http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=76418> for my rant and Red Hat's heels being dug in.
Red Hat is only making bogus dependencies worse Posted Mar 18, 2003 21:39 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Submitting a patch is usually more effective than arguing, especially arguing in the manner you chose to use. Show that the issue is easy to fix, and it's more likely to be fixed. Show that your opponent is stupid, and the issue will remain in the future versions.
Red Hat is only making bogus dependencies worse Posted May 4, 2003 16:17 UTC (Sun) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link] Red Hat made it pretty clear to me that they wouldn't entertain a patch to fix their "feature".
Old and stupid Posted Mar 18, 2003 17:40 UTC (Tue) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link] Remember the zlib bug that required many programs to be fixed whereas fixing the library was only required for other programs? This makes the idea stupid because some programs that use functions covered by this old library may or may not have the bug. While having the code will find them, unless people really know the code these may not be found and fixed until too late.PS: I would of thought that he would have mentioned the "more than 8710 packages" for Debian :-)
Sounds Like Debian Posted Mar 18, 2003 18:08 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] At the end of the article, his recommendation for dealing with proliferated dependencies amounts to switching to Debian. (The Debian project solved the multiple-versions problem long ago.) I wonder why he doesn't just say so.
Iapt4rpm is great for this Posted Mar 19, 2003 13:12 UTC (Wed) by ahornby (subscriber, #3366) [Link] Solves rpm dependencies in the same way as Debian. See freshrpms for info. Cheers, Alex.
Iapt4rpm is great for this Posted Mar 23, 2003 0:34 UTC (Sun) by daenzer (✭ supporter ✭, #7050) [Link] > Solves rpm dependencies in the same way as Debian.I doubt that. Debian's solution lies in the packages, specifically their refined relationships, not merely in the tools.
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