Revisiting RPM Package Management [LWN.net]

Revisiting RPM Package Management

Posted Sep 18, 2003 14:52 UTC (Thu) by ladislav (guest, #247)
Parent article: Revisiting RPM Package Management

It seems that many readers consider my claim that SuSE does not have an advanced package manager incorrect. Admittedly, after reading all the comments above I would not dare to assert that claim again. However, and before I admit complete defeat and lack of knowledge, please consider these two points:

1. By "advanced package manager" I meant a package manager which would enable to add third-party repositories, after which the user could continue to expect flawless installations of packages from those repositories. Let's take a package not readily available in SuSE 8.2, such as BitTorrent or Webmin. How would one install those with YaST? Can anybody explain the process? Debian's apt-get and Mandrake's urpmi make this very simple; is it the same with YaST? Otherwise one could claim that Red Hat's up2date is an advanced package manager with dependency resolution, which would be a fair comment. But up2date is hardly a satisfactory solution - if it was, there would be no place for "yum".

2. Probably the main reason for my claim that there is no advanced package manager in SuSE is the regular appearance of apt-related questions on SuSE's mailing lists. This would seem to indicate that many people do in fact install apt4rpm on SuSE Linux. This I find mysterious given some of the above posts - if YaST can handle package dependencies, update software to newer versions and install packages from third-party repositories, why would anybody want to use apt4rpm? If you know the answer, please enlighten me.

As many readers have correctly guessed, I am not a regular SuSE user. I have, however, installed every SuSE version since 7.2 (I am writing this from SusE 8.2) - mainly to see what's new and to get a general feel for each new release. I usually give SuSE a few hours of attention after installation (I honestly believe that SuSE Linux is a superb product), but it isn't my main production distro. As such, I don't have a detailed knowledge of all its intricacies. That's why a forum like this is an excellent place to learn from experts and I do appreciate all your corrections. Please keep them coming.

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Revisiting RPM Package Management

Posted Sep 18, 2003 15:32 UTC (Thu) by duck (subscriber, #4444) [Link]

Hello,

as I said - there are hardly any third party repositories. SuSEs yast handles
dependencies automatically, but not if the dependency can not be resolved with the
packages available within known repositories.

Have a look at packman.links2linux.de.

There you will find lots of updated multimedia rpms for different SuSE versions. If you
select one package, YAST is launched and you can install it directly from the web - if
there are no dependencies that can only be solved by installing another third-party
rpm. Since this is hardly the case with multimedia rpms, the feature is not very useful
for these rpms.

Nevertheless, yast detects dependecies, tries to solve them and even allows you to
force the installation of a package. The capabilities are there, but not the repositories.

Cheers

duck

Revisiting RPM Package Management

Posted Sep 19, 2003 11:15 UTC (Fri) by RobDavies (guest, #9930) [Link]

Quotes from the article :

"especially a lack of one with the ability to auto-resolve dependencies"

"SuSE Linux is the only major Linux distribution still stubbornly
refusing to provide and support any apt-like, dependency resolving package
management tool"

Talk about rpm based distro's failing to resolve dependencies is riddled
through this article. OTOH, I find no mention of 3rd party repositories,
until your introduction of what you mean by "advanced package manager" in
the comments section. The whole article's emphasis is actually on
auto-depends resolution, so it is natural for the reader to be misled, by
the statements made.

The article should be retracted and replaced with a useful fact based one,
maybe including a discussion on the pro's & con's of 3rd party
repositories. It is now clear that RedHat is in fact the last leading
distribution to add, these features, so the last paragraph singling out
SuSE, should be particularly embaressing, they should receive an apology.

I think the reason why apt4rpm is popular under SuSE is a combination :

1) Media "Buzz", everyone knows apt-get <package> installs a package.
There have not been many (any at all?) articles on the net, about command
line YaST features, probably because it's SuSE specific, and reviewers
traditionally demand and review GUI administration, not fully appreciating
the power of the commandline. YaST's dependency resolution is very, very
old news, so is not reported. User's tend not to read manuals, so even
documented features may be ignored, for some other method which has more
publicity.

2) 3rd party package providers may specify apt, it's simpler for them to
standardise on one format, rather than learn new distro-specific ones.

3) YaST2 has been under constant development since it's introduction in
7.0, the online updating was not initially implemented particularly well,
and SuSE has not emphasised a committed stable repository format, nor
particularly encouraged 3rd party repositories.

Very many commercial server installations, want stability and
accountability for the core set of system features, with a few key
applications installed. Then QA features like cryptographic signing, and
known suppliers of packages, to a known base release, are more important
than convenient add-ons from 3rd parties.

A standardised format for these competing implementations, YaST, uprmi and
yum, might be interesting as an extension to LSB, the initial strategy of
fixed & stable library versions present, appears to be unrealistic and
ignored in practice. As some Debian using readers point out, strictly
adhered policies on library versioning is important.