Unifying Linux Package Management

Job Diogenes Ribeiro Borges writes "The Smart Package Manager is an intelligent tool that works on the 'dependency hell' of software upgrading and installation on linux. Works with all major distributions (APT, APT-RPM, YUM, URPMI, etc), supporting multiple sources and technologies concurrently. Yes, you could install from multiple sources, from deb, rpm, tgz at same time! Smart Package Manager is being developed by Conectiva and is the tool that makes the Magic of CrossPlatform package management, behind the recently announced 'Four Linux Vendors Agree On An LSB Implementation.' You can get screenshots here (portuguese texts) and a README here."

Comments

Oh, dandy

[krog]

Combining the weaknesses of five different package managers will surely alleviate "dependency hell."

I'll be over here, playing nethack on my NetBSD box and giggling.

Re:Oh, dandy

[whyne]

I don't understand all this fuss is about. cvsup -g -L 2 /usr/ports-supfile cd /usr/ports/xxx/xxx make install clean there is always pkg_add -r xxx.xxx.xxx or in a pinch : portsdb -Uu portversion -l "" portupgrade -arR with the occasional pkgdb -fu

This is good

[skids]

Projects like this create a top-down pressure for packaging formats to standardize, adopt each other's features, and work on new features collaboratively. By having an developer community abstracting package formats and procedures, the package system authors get a comparative peer review, rather than just user feedback. This highlights the benefits and shortcomings of each packaging system in a much more impartial manner than any magazine review or forum discussion.

The GUI part of it really doesn't appeal to me. Lots of my machines are headless, and even with X11 I remote display don't particularly like the idea of installing umpteen X11 toolkits and support libraries on a router/fileserver/webserver just to support package management. It's good to see that they have commandline utilities as well.

Re:You're going to hate this but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just Debian. Pretty much anything non-RPM based has no "dependency hell". Why do Debian, Gentoo, and the BSDs not have dependency hell? Because the repositories are controlled! RPM-based distributions will try to install anything from anywhere, and it's no big surprise that nothing matches up.

It's really that simple. Dependency hell is not a software problem. It's a management problem.

OSX

[minus_273]

if linux is to be truly ready for the desktop we need a syatem like in OSX. Something that is as intiitive and simple as dragging an icon to the applications folder to install and then dragging it to the trash to uninstall. That should be it. I know there are arguments against this apprach from geeks who talk about the waste in having redundnat libaries, but this is not intenedeed for geeks it is for people who want software to just work.

Re:Lets start the fighting now.

[aclarke]

Well when *I* was in school, I had to run Netscape on HP/UX, displayed on my local X Server running on a Windows 3.1 box. Displayed over a 2400 baud modem. Uphill. Both ways. In the rain.

With NOBODY to hold my hands. Because the life of the geek is a lonely life.