Debian Packaging Policies
Posted Sep 19, 2003 3:38 UTC (Fri) by
lovelace (subscriber, #278)
In reply to:
Don't be misled by ncm
Parent article:
Revisiting RPM Package Management
You're right, Debian's packaging policies add a lot to how well it can deal with things like
library version conflicts. That's why Mandrake adopted the same policies with version 8.0. I
would love to see Red Hat do something like this as it really does simpilify the problem of
multiple library packages without doing hacks like saying that this packages that was
formally named foo is now foo1.0 and the current package foo is now version 2.0.
One other thing of Debian's Mandrake uses is the Debian menu system. This allows the
user to have the same menu system no matter what desktop they use (KDE, GNOME,
WindowMaker, etc...).
Most of Mandrake these days is put together by volunteers working on the Cooker project. I
would suggest that, although not as big as Debian, they have done at least as good a job as
Debian has. Because of how open source/free software works, they don't have to
"duplicate" Debian's work. They can follow their example and the example of others and
pick the parts that work and leave the parts that don't. The nice thing is, though, is that
Debian can do the same. As a community, any work we do can help each other. That's one
of the things that makes open source/free software great. I'm glad to see that Red Hat
finally seems to be embracing the community more and I wish them all the luck.
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