Yet another package manager

[Matthew Carpenter]

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David Bandel wrote:
| On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 06:47:58 -0500, Matthew Carpenter <matt at eisgr.com>
wrote:
|
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|>Problem is, whether it's the rims or the rubber, the wheels we're
|>running on ain't that great.  I have yet to really poke into APT yet
|>(the rims, or package management infrastructure) but even it seems to
|>have its difficulties in that the sources tend to be HTTP repositories.
|>~  (does APT support FTP as well?)  I've been using Aptitude as a front
|
|
| yes.  in fact, that's the original.  http support was added later
| (many years ago, but still after the initial implementation)
|
After sending the message I felt rather dumb.  APT would not be as big
as it is if it didn't support FTP and HTTP, and hopefully others.  I
would like to know what all it supports, however.  Does it support SCP
or some other encrypted, authenticated (key-based for automation) transport?
|
|
| well, some interfaces can deal with all of them, or alien can
| translate from one to the other. After all, a binary package can be
| opened and repackaged easily enough.  RPMs don't boil down to much
| more than gzip'd cpio packages.
|
That's where we disagree.  You see, checkinstall was great for tracking
and removing packages installed from source.  But RPM's are much more.
The reason to write your own "SPEC" files is to allow for scripting and
decision-based configuration/integration.  I am not familiar with DEB's
yet so I can't compare.  Perhaps I'll be a lover of DEBs.  Right now I
appreciate being able to have near-complete control before install,
after install, before removal, after removal and during the build
process.  I do wish, however, that RPMBUILD would be a little nicer
(like if I mention wildcard filespecs for what to include, just accept
it as one file and move on.  Don't bomb out.)
|
|>Before you get upset about "someone reinventing the wheel", remember one
|>of the best tenets of Open Source: Choice.
|>If nobody ever reinvented the wheel we would not have the choices.  I
|>realize that it makes it easier to make choices when there are a limited
|>number, but 1) there is always a limited number of choices and 2) their
|>way may be better!  On an off chute, I was rather intrigued that MEPIS
|>uses Kpackage.  Wow!  Talk about a return to COL days.  :)
|
|
| Nothing wrong with another paciage manager, especially if it does
| something better (particularly dependency management).  I moved away
| from RPM because I didn't need the headaches RPM depencies were giving
| me.
|
I only use RPM because it's what I got, what I know.  I just installed
APT4RPM on my first SuSE system today.  That coupled with Kynaptic and a
few APTRPM repos are awesome.  IMHO, RPM's aren't the problem as much as
~ not having a package-tool as good as APT.  Then again, I've heard
something about package- versus file-based dependencies...  I guess I
have a lot to learn yet.  "And miles to go before I sleep..."
- --
Matthew Carpenter
matt at eisgr.com                          http://www.eisgr.com/

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