More on APT-RPM [LWN.net]

The previous article calls APT-RPM one of Conectiva's best known software utilities, and references some articles about it which are good, but dated. As it happens, this LWN editor has been looking at APT-RPM recently, so this seemed like a good time for APT-RPM update.

APT-RPM is an active development project headed by Gustavo Niemeyer, who started working on the project at the beginning of the 0.5.4 series. The Freshmeat project page shows the release of version 0.5.5cnc5 on April 14, 2003.

The APT-RPM mailing list is a good place to watch if you want to stay current. Gustavo has been busy adding many interesting features like the new apt-shell tool, or the recently added scripting capabilities, which will allow users to customize advanced setups.

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Apt-rpm the way to go, or is there something else?

Posted May 1, 2003 8:18 UTC (Thu) by mongre26 (guest, #4224) [Link] (1 responses)

I have been using apt-rpm for several months now and have found it to be excellent for managing and adding packages. Sites like freshrpms.net and the kde3.x rpm maintainers make it a must have rpm tool.

I have noticed apt-rpm seems to be able to show flaws in the rpm data system (corruption) quicker than perhaps is usual with hand installed rpms. However I have had rpm db corruption with or without apt-rpm.

I am not posting to talk about apt however. What I wanted to mention is another tool I have been using over the last week or so to great effect. Both from a client perspective as well as for centralized system management.

A tenth the size in code of RPM Yum (http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/) makes use of dependency information in the rpm headers themselves to resolve issues.

In my work Yum is already proving itself a worthy successor to apt-rpm.

In addition to the client side featuers the default Yum rpm install also supports a feature that as a system manager I particularly like, yum-arch.

What yum-arch does is in a few seconds turn your dull boring collection of rpms into a full yum repository. No additional scripts required.

Yum also comes with prebuilt scripts for automatic updates via cron, again showing Yum's focus on managing multiple systems transparently.

Yum allows an admin to quickly and easily maintain a custom yum tree of rpm's for your environment, as well as integrating updates and base packages from the vendor.

Aside from the flexibility local repositories give me I can install packages over gigabit where before I was limited to a couple mbit/s

Now certainly making your own apt repository is supported and I have been able to find some documentation. However compared to yum it is complicated and opaque.

Built for simplicity yum looks like it will fit very well within my environment.

Oh and freshrpms.net also supports yum. :)

http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/yum-repo.ptml

Apt-rpm the way to go, or is there something else?

Posted Nov 25, 2003 1:13 UTC (Tue) by niemeyer (guest, #17169) [Link]

Creating a local apt-rpm repository is as hard as including this in your sources.list (supposing a repository in /pub/distro/RPMS.local):

rpm-dir file:///pub distro local

There's no need to maintain any metadata in that case. Just drop files in this directory and apt will automagically recognize them.

Since 0.5.15cnc3, you may also choose to install packages passing the local path in the command line. The registered repositories will be used to solve any dependencies not found in the provided packages.

More on APT-RPM

Posted May 2, 2003 14:29 UTC (Fri) by ahornby (guest, #3366) [Link]

I've found apt for rpm and synaptic to be execellent. Head over to freshrpms.net for the best redhat related apt site.

More on APT-RPM

Posted May 7, 2003 11:39 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

Another interesting distro that is based on apt-rpm is ALT Linux from Moscow. They've made a very successful attempt to change Mandrake into Debian (in regards of apt usage, resolving the dependency hell, and building a large contributor community), and are probably the most popular distro in Russian-speaking countries (here in Minsk they outsell both Debian (also packaged by them, btw) and ASP Linux, another popular Russian distro).