dependency tool for RedHat

Paul Iadonisi pri.rhl1 at iadonisi.to
Thu Aug 7 20:22:41 UTC 2003


On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 13:06, Arnaud Abelard wrote:
> > up2date has been available since 6.2 I believe. Do you even use Red Hat?
> 
> up2date isn't comparable to apt-get or yum by the way it can't retrieve
> non official packages from different sources. That's what i was talking
> about. Stay calm
> 
> up2date like the name suggests it, is used to keep your linux  up to date.
> Can't be used to install third party packages. RedHat actually doesn't
> provide anything like this yet. Apt-get for RPM or yum do.
> 
> Glad yum is now in rawhide. RHL needed that.

  As these tools go, yum is probably the better choice.  At least
according to the yum developer, apt re-implements a lot of stuff that
rpm is already doing and there is likely a lot of Debian cruft in the
code.  (I'm not slighting Debian, btw, it's just that from the
perspective of an rpm based system, much of the code could be considered
cruft.)  There's also the fact that most (all?) of Red Hat's config
tools are written in python, so you can be fairly certain that the
rpm-python bindings are being well maintained (yum is written in
python).
  But from what I can tell, there is a problem with all of the tools
that allow you specify multiple repositories.  And it's the reason I
won't use things like Ximian's (Novell's?) Desktop, even though it's
cool.  And that is that different versions of a specific package may be
provided from multiple repositories.  I know of no tools that, say,
allow you to specify that if a package exists in repository #1, then
never take any version of the package from repositories #2 - #5.  Though
it might be a lot more work, I should even be able specify that if a
package from my lower priority repositories have any files that conflict
with any files from any packages in my highest priority repository, then
don't take that package from those lower priority repositories.  Or at
least not without making lots of noises about possible later conflicts
with core distribution components.
  But I should definitely be able to do this at the package level so I
could, for example, be able to specify a list of packages (Gnome and
company) to get only from the Ximian repository and never get them from
the Red Hat repository.

Just my $0.02 worth.
-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets





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