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Gentoo Linux Rethinks Package Management System
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!"
And a Happy April to everyone!! :)
libertarianswag.com
At last, we Debian users have a legitimate reason to snub Gentoo.
Just kidding! Happy April Fools' Day everybody.
I was pissed.. Until I realized the GWN is dated April 1.. Haha... damn.. had me for a few seconds there.. Bastards! :)
Thank you. Drive through. (:wq)
I can't speak for the community in general, but RPMs are the number 1 reason I started to avoid redhat. The idea that the build script et al is inside the package and kept away from the user is pretty absurd in my opinion. This was what drove me into the arms of BSD. Linux called me back for it's hardware support, but after a decision like this, I'll be hard pressed to stick with gentoo. Or, another perspective, how is this not debian, once and again?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My heart jumped about 3 feet before I rememberd it is April 1.
I'll just remember to disregard everything for the next 24 hours.
Come to think of it, most of the stories are misleading anyway. Why should 1 April be any different.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-user&r=1&w= 2
Check the above link for some of the gentoo-user mailing list archives - discussion started a few minutes after the newsletter went out. Common consensus is that it's April Fools - killing the package management system that makes Gentoo unique and requiring X is just too big a step to make without any discussion on the gentoo-dev list. Kurt did a really good job on this one if Slashdot bit!
It must be getting around that time of year ... April, huh?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I just had a f***ing heart attack, until I thought about that for a minute or two. First time (in ALL honesty) I've EVER been taken in by an April Fool's joke. Shame on you, DRobbins! SHAME ON YOU!!!
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Unfortunately all of us West-Coast people who dont realize that there is a time difference dont have the April 1'st status displaying on our computer clocks. We're ovbiously in the dark here.
OMG OMG OMG WTF OMG WTF BBQ STFU RTFM, OMFG OMG OMG OMG ROFL LMAO OMG WTF STFU ROFLMAO
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.
.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.
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
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
...We wouldn't want our various versions of Linux to actually agree on ONE standard for package management, after all! :P
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
sick sons of bitches...
1. It's a joke. (Look at the calendar. Don't believe anything you read on slashdot in the next 24 hours).
..., get home from work exhausted the next day, look for that package, find a few rpms compiled for a different distro, architecture, gcc version, or rpm version, scream in disgust, and then switch to Debian or Gentoo.
2. You obviously know not of what you speak. RPMs are more complicated than Gentoo ebuilds or debian debs.
With Gentoo you type:
# emerge enlightenment
You don't have to know anything about C, C++, Python or even shell scripting. All you have to know is your architecture and the optimizations you want (and the detailed docs are very newbie friendly).
with debian type:
# apt-get install enlightenment
Either distro will then install E, X, and all required libs/programs.
Both distros have centralized package repositories (free of charge) that contain everything I've ever needed, tested for full compatibility.
With rpm, you find the package, download it, type the rpm command, get an error about libWhatever.X.Y.Z.so being required, spend hours figuring out what package has libWhatever.X.Y.Z.so, go to bed three hours late, because you were looking for the package,
This was a clever April Fool's post. It caught me by surprise. Well done, Slashdot.
Of course, what I'm not looking forward to is the next twenty-four hours, when Slashdot will be filled with nonstop April Fool's jokes, completely defeating the purpose of April Fool's day.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I was so scared, I soiled myself. Now excuse me while I go change my armor....
Just in case anyone's really confused:t ter.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030401-newsle
There is a thread in the Gentoo forums about this.
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
Man. I know I shouldn't feed the trolls. But I'm sick of this. You're comparing a file format to a dependency tracking system. compare apt-get and portage to up2date for redhat. Don't even try to tell me that downloading the .deb for enlightenment and trying to install it with dpkg is any simpler than downloading the .rpm for enlightenment and installing it with rpm. dpkg won't automatically track down dependencies and install them for you. It will just fail. Just like trying to install the rpm will. 'up2date enlightenment' is just as easy to understand as 'apt-get install enlightenment' And don't give me any crap about only getting stuff from Red Hat. Anyone can set up an up2date server, just like anyone can set up an apt repository.
RedHat announced today that they will be abandoning the RPM format in favor of .deb. One RedHat source who asked to remain anonymous called RPM "the biggest support nightmare I have ever seen. Why, compiling software is so much easier." ;-)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
well, it isn't so much RPM that sucks as a tool in itself as it is braindead package authors (well, it is kind of non-unixy in the small tool that does one thing kind of philosophy, rpm is a huge monolithic program). So you try to install lynx and find perl is a dependency. wha? ok, so you install perl. You don't really have space for it on this box, but hey, maybe it will come in handy. But the perl rpm says a dozen or so perl modules are dependencies. huh? Those damn things are optional, goddammit. But whatever. So perl is happy. Back to wget. Now it says it has to install index.html. WTF? A fucking homepage? That's a damn dependency? awright, let it continue, and now it bitches cause index.html is generated by python.
That's the problem with RPM systems. You want to install a text-only browser on a 486 and wind up installing 100 megs more vthan you wanted to.
Some software comes only in RPM packages, like Compaq's C compiler. Ever tried to install an rpm on a Slackware system? It complains that glibc, bin/sh and a kernel aren't installed. RPM is stupid.
I've patched my rpm to take --just-do-it-you-goddam-piece-of-shit as an argument, which sets the --force and --nodep bits.
With debian and gentoo the package format and package manager are highly coordinated. /usr/portage contain all depenencies. I forget whether debian includes them in apt's database or in the actual deb file, but apt-get install has never failed me.
An rpm doesn't include a list of all rpms it requires, just libs, and neither does the rpm database.
The ebuilds in
Having some other person be able to run the server that redhat should give access to for free doesn't help. That server is pretty useless unless it's housing the latest packages all tested for integration, like debian and gentoo. And who's running it? I feel pretty safe getting files from debian.org or gentoo.org, but some_guys_home-grown_redhat.com doesn't inspire confidence in me.
Rpm was never designed for upgrading. Redhat's idea of an upgrade is buy the next version and install it.
A debian box can do an entire upgrade (including glibc) without having to reinstall or even reboot. The only thing that requires a reboot is a kernel upgrade, so you can run the new kernel.
I'd suspect that gentoo can act similarly. And I'll find out when the next major revision of glibc comes out.
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.
...so we can point at him an laugh ;-)
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
*ducks for cover*
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.
monkeys weren't flying out of my butt.
Sounds like you want something like Zero Install. It uses the globally unique nature of the Internet's DNS system to remove the need for a central package database, allowing packages to be fetched (and cached) as they're needed, so you never install anything you don't use.
There are no dependancy issues, because applications link to resources by URI, so the system always knows where to get missing files from.
And you don't need to be root to 'install' stuff, because it's just a high-speed network cache, so all users can install stuff easily and safely, and you don't get buggy running-as-root postinst scripts bombing out and messing up your system like on Debian, etc.
And April 1st was probably a bad time for me to announce this ;-)
Unlike /. which will post anything without checking for authenticity.
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