Don't be misled [LWN.net]

Don't be misled

Posted Sep 18, 2003 10:31 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460)
In reply to: Don't be misled by Ross
Parent article: Revisiting RPM Package Management

> Of course RPM also fails to support all the nice features of DEB and it was introduced long before apt. It may predate RPM, I don't remember.

AFAIR deb was conceived before rpm but saw the light of day after: Red Hat didn't want to collaborate with (and wait for) the right thing, so they got an access of NIHS and went their own way with their own half-baked stuff, thus fragmenting the community.

And here they go again with yum over apt. Sad.

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Don't be misled

Posted Sep 18, 2003 14:46 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (subscriber, #3094) [Link]

Hi,
I don't work for red hat. I work for duke university. I'm a sysadmin there.
I'm the author of yum. I think one of the reasons red hat has put yum in rawhide before apt (and note, it's just BEFORE, it's not INSTEAD) is that yum, is about 7000 lines of code, while apt is 40000+. Also yum is in python which we all know red hat is far more comfortable in.

I don't think this has anything to do with denying debian or NIHS b/c they didn't invent yum.

Also, if you'd look closely at up2date in rawhide you'll notice that is has support for both yum and apt-rpm repositories.

-sv

Don't be misled

Posted Sep 18, 2003 15:08 UTC (Thu) by DancingProg (subscriber, #4816) [Link]

Thank you for the info and the great tool.

Don't be misled

Posted Sep 18, 2003 22:36 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link]

Indeed, thank you for the great tool, the difference in line count is impressive.

Debian's decision to use C is a sound one however, because python would bloat the base system significantly. apt-get in stable on i386 is about 153 kB (not kiB); python alone is about 518 kB. So as Debian and derivatives (e.g. Familiar) are installed on embedded systems from iPaqs to routers, the significantly smaller base system -- without sacrificing automatic dependency management -- is an advantage.

But perhaps RedHat is not concerned with such markets.

Don't be misled

Posted Jan 6, 2004 17:38 UTC (Tue) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]

> I think one of the reasons red hat has put yum in rawhide before apt (and note, it's just BEFORE, it's not INSTEAD) is that yum, is about 7000 lines of code, while apt is 40000+.

This has more to do with their homegrown RPM that they decided to use instead of help finishing dpkg at the time.