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APT - With Your Favorite Distribution
Then there is another solution from Connectiva in Brazil, which has made something called APT4RPM -- basically an APT wrapper around RPM database on your machines, so you can use all of Debian's APT features (sans DSELECT feature) to upgrade your packages, or your entire distribution. (So now you can use your favorite distribution AND APT to update it.)
Two open source developers have improved Connectiva's solution to work with ANY RPM-4 based solution, and the [not finished yet but seems pretty stable solution] is at APT4RPM project pages in sourceforge. I have decided to give a test on my Redhat 7.2 machine. I installed the binaries, edited the /etc/apt/sources.list (just remove the # from your distribution's mirror), typed "apt-get dist-update," crossed my fingers -- and lo and behold, 48 new packages were installed, 7 were upgraded, and I only had to press "enter" to start the ball rolling!
So, for those of you who want to test it -- the URL is above (and if you could help with creating mirrors for your favorite distribution - that would be very helpful, thank you), you might want to try it. Just don't forget to read the FAQ before doing anything, and report bugs to the authors. Note: although the binaries are for Red Hat, the SRPMS are right there so you can just recompile it on your favorite distribution. Enjoy.
I've been using this on Solaris for a few months and it works really well. There are certainly some code maturity issues but it is incredibly useful for serious system administration.
Austin Murphy
amurphy@nbcs.rutgers.nospam.edu
This was one of the reasons I moved to slackware. Virtually no package management. You want software? Get the darn tarball and have at it. Configure will tell you if you don't have the right dependencies. It has worked wonderfully for me. Yes, I know of the disadvantages of slackware's lack of package management. They are smaller than the advantages, imho.
On that note, I think since Slackware pretty much starts at nothing in the PM arena, it would be a great candidate for some kind of apt-get-type system. But that would, after all, pretty much collide with slackware's motto of being kept exceedingly simple. (Almost to a fault, some might say.)
It has no problems with dependencies, because anything needed is download right then and compiled from source. It also can uninstall.
And here is the shocker... FreshPorts.
Too bad its all under BSD liscence.. cus now M$ can use all of FreeBSD's port system in Windows XP 2005+ Profestional
the thing which makes apt really cool is not because it's using debs instead of rpm's.
;-)
It's cool because
1. For debian testing/unstable you can get daily updates to your system. For stable you can get daily security updates.
2. You know updating your system will be a simple, painless and easy process. You know it will automagically work after two shell commands.
3. It is much more configurable than most RPM interfaces.
4. There is usually one "kind" of debs, which come officially from Debian.org, instead of a million different RPMS for Redhat/Mandrake/SuSE etc which conflict with each other
5. You have almost everything you need. If you use "unstable", you will always be on the "bleeding edge" with not too many problems, rather than waiting for distros to release their latest CD, and then sometimes trash the whole system because of a failed upgrade.
6. And of course, without the dependency hell!
As you see, dependency hell isn't the whole reason why people prefer apt above RPM based systems. Before they solve these problems, debian/apt will still be my first choice.
Don't quote me on this.
Well, how about looking at the thingie's homepage? The guys running it should know.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
My major gripe about the way linux distribs work is that they like to install stuff right into /usr/bin and /usr/lib.
/usr/bin, /usr/lib etc etc and whenver i wanted to, just rm -rf /usr/local (or /usr/X11R6 for X stuff) and be done with it. Plus removing the /var/db/pkg (or where-ever the package db files are stored)
I'd enjoy it if the base system stayed in
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
So naturally, because a handful of users posting to a phpnuke site have trouble, and voice that trouble, Debian unstable must be hard to use.
I'd love to see you become a statistician.
Have you considered that there could easilly be twice as many users that never have problems, but don't frequent debianplanet.org, or feel compelled to post that they don't have problems?
> I *knew* that mutt doesn't *require* a spell checker,
This is why Debian has fiels called 'Recommends' and 'Suggests'. However, apt doesn't honor these, other frontends do (like aptitude)
Package: mutt
Depends: libc6, libsasl7, exim | mail-transport-agent
Recommends: mime-support
Suggests: locales, urlview, ispell, gnupg | pgp | pgp5i
apt won't install ispell, but other aptitude will tell you that those packages are suggested or recommended by the package maintainer.
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
Have you ever actually used RPM? It allows you to specify prerequisites with their versions in more or less the same way as dpkg. Certainly a lot more than just the version of shared libraries.
It's true that a lot of RPM builders do not bother to include this information. But that's not the fault of the format itself. A lot of the claimed advantages of .deb over .rpm are really just because the Debian people are more conscientous about packaging and anal (in a good way) about getting the dependencies correct. Ditching RPM is not the answer, better packaging quality is.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
"Most Debian Developers take care of a *single* package."
What? How do you know?
This one's pretty easy. The maintainers' names are plastered all over the place and there are easy referencing methods. He's mostly right, though I think the norm might be something like two or three packages.
"the Debian packagers *care*"
Really? More than people who make rpms? How much more do they care?
This is subjective, but it's very easy to get in tough directly with the maintainers, who usually listen to your problems.
Then you spout I just don't see why anyone would run Linux and not want to compile software, be on bleeding edge, and actually administer a UNIX system... I feel like I'm running Windows 95.
To which a "mean" guy answers Obviously, you never administered a high-availablilty multiuser machine... just your little hacker playtoy machine. Try explaining to 200-300 users that you'll be down for a few hours because you installed some new software, and broke the system.
If you expect anyone to be nice to you after saying: Unconfigurable software with horrid defaults, plain bad planning, changing industry standards without notice, etc. you need a reality check.
Then in 1997-06 someone has cc:ed the list a mail to you about a webpage where you give your "opinion" on Debian. Apparently it contained the same FUD you produced in January.
I didn't find any posts to you from Bruce Perens, but I hope he tore into you for being so rude and arrogant in your ignorance.
I see no reason for you to complain about any rudeness or flaming from Debian developers/users since you brought it to that level all by yourself.
Personally I moved (in 1996) from Slackware to Debian because Debian was more up to date. I was never inclined to whine to the Slackware developers about them not working harder to satisfy my "bleeding edge" needs though.
>What? How do you know?
You can find out who maintains how many packages here: List
You can do this with linux.
.profile/.login to add any directory you want to the library path. You can have libraries out the wazoo in your home directory.
Simply edit your
I dunno how rpm does with it, but if you compile for yourself this is simple.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Here are 3 people using unstable (5 PCs, all desktop), we had no problem with it at all. And under unstable i can play Counter-Strike and watch movies in sync, that things where not possible for me with Suse 7.2, I am a new User to Debian and Linux in general. So I dont know if there are Problems awaiting me in the future but i dont think that this will hapen.
One possibility is to use
GNU stow
.
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen - http://iki.fi/juhtolv
"the Debian packagers *care*" Really? More than people who make rpms? How much more do they care?
I have three packages in Debian that I am personally responsible for. I'm very familiar with each of those packages, in a way that no one that packages a hundred packages can be. I'm also very responsible for each of those messages - Debian has a tracking system for bonehead mistakes (and other things) that I like to keep clean. Almost no RPM developers have that combination, and it functions the same way for many of my fellow developers.
./configure
make
make install
Is there anyway to uninstall it?
"make uninstall" will work in a lot of cases. With applications that use ./configure, it's usually pretty easy to turn it into a Debian package that you can install from by using the debmake, devscripts and sudo packages.
Go into the directory where ./configure is, and type "deb-make". Normally you want a "S"ingle Binary. This has now created a Debian build tree. Try to convert it into a package by running "debuild -rsudo". Hopefully this will spit out a .deb file in the parent directory. You can now install this by running "sudo debi". Dead easy.
To recap:
deb-make
s
debuild -rsudo
sudo debi
The package can be removed like any other package, e.g. via dselect.
Further down in this thread, someone mentioned the
Everyone makes a big deal about compiling from source in Slackware, or "not having a package management system", but completely ovelook the reasons why slackware doesn't appear to focus on package management.
- Slackware is as unix-like as possible. POSIX (correct me if i'm wrong) does not dictate any package management standards of any sort.
- Slackware's (very under-used)
.tgz package manager is simple and works with VERY few problems. It's similar, though not straight-up compatible, with the BSD packages and ports... The package manager is very slackful itself, and allows you to compile lots of stuff yourself without unnecessarily bitching about dependencies. Sure, it can lead to non-uber-developers missing a dependent library when installing something big, but they can go back and add that library either by source or by package, and all is good.
- Many RedHat-built packages (provided they're not built on GCC 2.96) work very well with Slackware, especially when converted to
.tgz using rpm2tgz or any of its accompanying tools. These tools allow you to have the best of both worlds (fully packaged software and a super-lightweight, nearly transparent package manager).
Slackware's developers follow the line of thought that package management is not and never will be an end-all solution to software installation on a *nix operating system. Instead of trying to force package management down the throats of their users, they prefer to take a split approach, giving some fairly good package management capabilities (also THE easiest to learn out of any linux package manager - it's SO simple) without discouraging source-compilation of software.forgive me if i've repeated myself a thousand times. i'm just ranting.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Hi,
I use both Mandrake and Red Hat. And IMHO, urpmi is better than up2date. I've been using urpmi (or its GUI interface, MandrakeUpdate) for a while.
And URPMI just plain works.
Every day, I fire it up to check if there's something to be updated on my system. If there is, I upgrade no problem. If there are dependencies, you can opt what to do. And it has the same interface as the SoftwareManager. So it's the same thing installing, uninstalling or upgrading.
This is called consistence.
I've read that some poster tried to update the Kernel with this tool from the GUI. I can only say "you moron!". When there's some Kernel to be upgraded, some library to be upgraded, I take my time to read what is this alla bout. So, reading a little can save your butt. What is wrong with that ?
Also, when updating KDE make sure that you are not running KDE. Idem with Gnome.
Anyway, I would recommend to home users wanting to avoid rpm-hell to try Mandrake + URPMI / MandrakeUpdate.
Hopefuly, Red Hat will take URPMI and implement it on their distribution.
All the best,
opkool
(sorry for the extension).
I believe that RPM packages always have md5 checksums on all the files, whereas .deb packages, by default, do not.
That's probably what you heard.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README