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Fedora Project to Help Revitalize RPM

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the breathing-life-back-in dept.

-=Moridin=- writes "The Fedora Project has announced plans to revitalize RPM, the package manager used by many Linux distros. According to the announcement, 'Job #1 is to take the current RPM codebase and clean it up, and in doing so work with all the other people and groups who rely on RPM to build a first-rate upstream project.' For more information, see the the RPM web site and the new wiki-based RPM FAQ. The issue of RPM's upstream development has been a thorny issue ever since Jeff Johnson, the original maintainer of RPM, left Red Hat."

6 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. I have a... by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...good solution for them. Or should I call it apt?

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  2. Code cleanup... by nighty5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Job #1 is to take the current RPM codebase and clean it up.......

    Easy job, this took care of it.... :

    rm -rf /var/lib/rpm

  3. Anti-FUD Post by pembo13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) RPM is not equivalent to APT , or Smart
    2) RPM is not responsible for _solving_ deps
    3) RPM is both a file format and a program to use the format
    4) RPM is _not_ a package manager
    5) RPM has little to do with how much you may love your Debian distro of choice (unless you made that choice solely on the file format of the packages used by your distro)
    6) The existence and use of RPM does not work against your distro of choice, and so there is no reason to fear/hate it

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  4. Come again on that one? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Informative
    4) RPM is _not_ a package manager

    That would be the Redhat Package Manager, right?

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  5. Re:I've got something to say! by simm1701 · · Score: 5, Informative

    apt and rpm don't compete - they are not even similar in purpose - each fill a different role and are cooperative ratehr than competative.

    In fact apt can work quite well with rpms (the apt for rpm project springs to mind)

    Maybe you are confusing the issue with .deb files and dpkg?

    Personally I find .debs a slightly better package structure/file structure than rpms, and dpkg a more flexible and easier to use (getting both is quite an achievement I think) command line.

    However those are personal preference and while not quite as contentious as emacs vs vi I'm sure they won't be solved any time soon.

    You are right to bring up apt though - its apt that makes distros like ubuntu and debian shine. Or more importabltly its the repository organisation and discipline that sits behind apt. Without this organisation server side, the package files clearly listing each package which dependancies and conflicts, then the system is all but meaningless, and thats where apt for rpm has fallen down (not that it doesn't work, I've used it with several rpm respositories, its not bad but several times I've had to hand resolve large messy conflicts, I've had to do that on debian true, but only when doing really messy mixtures of sid sarge and woody all on one box during times of serious upheaval - gnome 1.4 to gnome 2 springs to mind)

    Getting rpm and apt to run better together is not really about code changes or design changes to either apt or rpm (or the existing apt for rpm software). Its about making good rpm respositories and the package files that go with them - that would be a huge improvement for starters.

    The main fustration people feel with rpm is dependancy resolving, being able to type rpm -i gcc-4.1.rpm and having it just work would be nice. People don't associate the same problem with the .deb system as they very rarely run somehting like dpkg -i gcc-4.1.deb - usually they will type apt-get install build-essentials or apt-get install gcc and it will "just work" (or they will use dselect but thats another topic)

    I think that is what really colours peoples perceptions. They feel pain frequently when they use rpm (I know I do). They don't feel pain when using .deb files via apt (and lets face it - if you are sing a distro with .deb you are almost certainly using apt or dselect). This perception causes the view that rpm is crap and .deb/dpkg is far superior. The real problem is though not the package management tool at all. Its the repository management policy, something that debian and debian based projects has had right for a long time.

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  6. Re:I've got something to say! by pato101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, yes, that is called inferno instead of hell.