RPM - What's New in Version 4.0?

rafa asks: "Red Hat has recently upgraded their RPM system from the 3.x to 4.0 in the the Red Hat 7.0 distribution. The RPM Web site hasn't been upgraded since sometime in 1999. What has changed since RPM 3? What improvements have been made, and why did they chose to break compatability?"

Comments

RPM misinformation (was:real-men-use-tarballs dpt)

[pastie]

Well, actually, an RPM is just a tarball with dependency information. How primitive.

Debian packages, on the other hand, are tarballs with dependencies and configure/uninstall scripts. Now there's a tarball you can take home to mom


RPMs can have configure/install/uninstall scripts, and more besides. And it has done since version 2 (probably before then, I can't remember right now).

I like Debian too, but please know what you are posting is actually correct before proclaiming Debian as having the best packaging system (which it may have, but not for this reason).

Many of the features of older versions of RPM can be found in the freely downloadable book `Maximum RPM' at rpm.org, where there is some documentation. But not for rpm 4.0, as the poster mentioned.

pastie

Is RPM capable of User-mode installs?

[Dr. Evil]

Can a user install packages without being root? I mean, most of the time you would install as root, but for some cases, like games, applications or the like, you should be able to install yourlelf... into your own home directory.

I've had to use tarballs to install IRC clients, Zmodem protocols, games and more on remote systems.

Without user-mode installations, it is just one more reason to give mobile users root access to their own systems.

I'm not a big fan of package management, it has caused me to rebuild more systems than manually solving dependencies has ever. As soon as somebody starts using the phrase "You'll have to rebuild if your corrupt your XXX" where XXX != "Filesystem", it generally means that XXX is a bad idea.

I have to get around to reading that Maximum RPM book...

Re:Is RPM capable of User-mode installs?

[Black Parrot]

> Can a user install packages without being root?

Two answers:

1) At work, I have "sudo" access for rpm, so I can install RPMs without being root.

2) There is a --relocate option that will let you install packages in non-standard locations, i.e. your personal directory tree. I'm not positive, but I believe the package must be designed for relocatability for this to work. There may also be issues with updating the RPM database, but there is also --dbpath for pointing to an alternative database. (I have never actually done any of this, but perhaps a Web search would turn up some examples.)

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