diff between rpm's '--whatprovides' and '-f'

Matt Hansen helios82 at optushome.com.au
Wed May 19 13:56:59 UTC 2004


On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 23:46, William Hooper wrote:
> Matt Hansen said:
> 
> > So, how can one if at all be used differently to the other? The man page
> > states that the "-f" option is used to 'Query package owning FILE' while
> > the "--whatprovides" is used to 'Query all packages that provide the
> > CAPABILITY capability'. So these words might suggest they can do
> > different things, but my example above doesn't think so.. What exactly
> > is a "capability" defined as?
> 
> "Capability" doesn't have to be a file.  For example, both Sendmail and
> Postfix provide the "smtpdaemon" capability.  This allows RPM creators to
> still rely on an "smtpdaemon" without caring if it is Sendmail or Postfix


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