yum vs. apt

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 21:01 -0500, Erik Hemdal wrote: 
> > Furthermore, yum is a script-based application suffering from the same
> > deficiencies all script-based applications suffer from. 
> 
> What deficiencies are you thinking about?

Basically, I was thinking about package dependencies, because it's very
easy to break script-based applications by corrupting the interpreter
underneath, than it is to break a binary application.

Problems like this
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-November/msg01218.html
are typical for script-based applications.

A subset of such problems are rpm-dependencies, which are very easy to
miss with python. E.g.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=140140
is such kind of bug.

Even the infamous "system-config-security-gui"-bug
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=139155
partially originates from this fundamental issue (Somebody changed the
interface of one tool and forgot to reflect these changes in the python-
GUI). There's no guarantee such kind of bug won't occur with binary
programs, however the likelihood for them to happen is (IMO
significantly) smaller.

>   Or are you thinking about
> "deficiencies of poorly-written programs in general".
No, that's not what I was referring to.

Although, ... scripts in general tend to be much slower than binary
programs, and resolving graphs (rpm-dependencies) in a scripted language
also isn't necessary a design decision promising speed ;)

Ralf