Re: corel

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

Mark Blunier said:
> Why are you disappointed when it is base on deb, which is better?

That's purely a matter of opinion.

IMNSHO, the big difference between Debian and the RPM-based
distributions is the tools.  There is no question that the Debian
tools are *way* ahead of RPM.  Red Hat has only recently made a
(somewhat feeble) attempt to remedy that with gnorpm.

On the other hand, I have yet to be convinced that the Debian package
management system as a whole is superior to RPM.  From what
(admittedly little) I've seen of Debian's packages, RPMs are cleaner
and easier to build.  Yes, the dependencies could use a little work
(why should someone necessarily need to know that a dependency on
libhistory.so.3 means they need the readline package installed?), but,
again, that's a tools issue, not an issue with the packaging system.

> Debian is easier to upgrade and maintiain due to its dependencies,
> predepends, recommended, and suggestions for the related packages,
> post-install scripts, and purge-scripts for deleting packages cleanly.

RPM packages have dependencies, pre- and post-install, and pre- and
post-remove scripts.  I'm not convinced that the various levels of
dependencies in Debian packages really buy you much.

That's not to say that the Debian system sucks really or anything...
It just really seems though that the people who say how great the
Debian system is don't see the distinction between the tools, the
package format, and the rest of the system.

RPM has several features that I *really* like.  First, there's the
distinction between source packages and binary packages (which, oddly
enough, is really more of a tool issue, since they use the same
on-disk format), and the whole spec file notion of source and patches,
which lets you easily build pristine source-based packages.  (Now, if
only rpm was smart enough to take a URL for source and go fetch it for
you...  Then rpm could build a package given only the spec file.)

Second, I do like it that RPM packages, whether source or binary, are
one file, rather than some funky directory structure or something.
(I'm not pointing fingers at anything in particular here...  I've seen
this on other operating systems.)  Now, if only the Red Hat people
hadn't taken the easy route of using a cpio-based on-disk format (so
they could just massage the file and exec cpio, rather than having to
do work themselves), instead of an easier-to-manipulate tar archive...
(It's a shame that nobody pointed out to the developers of rpm that
GNU cpio can handle tar archives.)

Hmm...  This email is getting too long, and I'm probably boring all of
you who have actually read this far.  :-)

OK, I'll close with this.  Here's a (probably not complete) list of
things I would like to see in the "perfect" package management system:

    1. Source and binary packages using one on-disk format.
    2. Package tools that know how to build binary packages from
       source packags.
    3. Single file package format based on tar.
    4. The ability to create "super-packages" containing several
       independent packages.  (In other words, something similar to
       the POSIX (AKA HP-UX) package spec's bundles, products, etc.,
       but without all the cruft. :)
    5. Package tools that are smart enough to let you implement some
       kind of policy for keeping local copies of files that have been
       upgraded or removed.  In other words, some way to make it just
       a little easier to recover when you screw yourself by removing
       a package like, say, mount.  (Has everybody here my story about
       that?  :-)
    6. Preferably a tool that was flexible enough to do something sane
       with foreign packages (and maybe even provide front-ends that
       implement their functionality/command-line arguments for
       transition purposes).

All of that would be pointless though without a distribution that had
a hard, fast list of requirements for packages...

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
(217)698-1694             | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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