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Gentoo Linux Rethinks Package Management System

Posted by timothy on from the after-all-rpm-is-better dept.

YOU ARE SO FIRED! writes "In an effort to conform to the LSB standards, Gentoo Linux will be adopting RPM as the standard form of package management in portage 2.1. More information can be found in the Gentoo weekly newsletter. I'd surely be fired if I would've proposed such an idea!"

3 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. LSB and Package Management Specifications. by SuperBug · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IMHO, something I've long thought about regarding LSB is that there should be a Package Management specification. Much like the way IEEE defines specifications for things, ANSI, ISO, and so on.

    After that, it should be up to a developer to decide how to implement that standard and thus conform to it. I like RPM. It's pretty easy to write for and deal with, at least for me, but I feel it is lacking a lot of things that I think it should have by now.

    It should be more modular, with regards to how package .spec files are written. It should provide more feature sets. i.e. Why does redcarpet, up2date, urpm, and others provide auto package dependancy checking and fulfillment while the standalone "rpm" base program doesn't? Yes, I know apt does, but I'm speaking only from within the realm of RPM. There are similiar tools available that do different things, on the same side of the fence.

    This is why I believe a full-on specification for what RPM is should be better established than it is today. IMHO, this offers people a much better reason to decide rpm over apt or apt over rpm or whatever else, when the playing field is leveled.

    Wishful thinking I guess.

    --
    --SuperBug
  2. Re:More Convience For Average People by pyros · · Score: 2, Interesting
    but apt-get install has never failed me

    You're still comparing 'apt-get install' to 'rpm -ivh'. You want to talk about working with an individual rpm package you've downloaded then talk about using dpkg in debian. apt-get queries a server to find dependencies for a package, downloads all of them, and runs dpkg to install them all. In Red Hat, up2date does the same thing. The whole point of my rant is you're not comparing the backend tool of one system to the automation tool that takes care of the same problems in another system. RPM fans don't say dpkg sucks compared to up2date. So don't tell us rpm sucks compared to apt-get. It's like saying I the clutch on a ford sucks compared to the automatic transmission of a chevy. The automatic transmission just does the clutch work for you.

  3. Re:More Convience For Average People by fo0bar · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You also can't (or couldn't the last time I was unfortunate enough to use RH--May '02) run a few simple commands and upgrade a box to the latest release. Debian and gentoo do it just fine.

    First of all, let me say that RPM is not perfect, just like everything else on the planet. I hate it when people have this "$X sucks nobody should ever use $X if you don't 100% agree with me you are an idiot" attitude. That being said, let me play devil's advocate for a bit:

    rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/8.0/en/os/i386/ RedHat/RPMS/redhat-release-8.0-8.noarch.rpm
    up2date -u -f

    Lookie, you just upgraded your system to 8.0.