Re: Debian, rpm and corporate world (was: Can rpm packages from other linux distribution be used on Debian?)
on Mon, May 17, 2004 at 11:07:01AM +0200, Dominique Dumont ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) writes: and I found that it can't find files it need in deb DB,I had been tried to install it on debian, #rpm -ivh myproduct-xxx-xx.rpm the program will prompt: myproduct need perl 5.6, and the bash must be installed As other people have written doing this is not a good thing. Put yourself in the other position. I have a .deb file from Debian. I want to install it on a RH system. Should I insist that you must use dpkg to install it there? That would be just as silly as insisting the reverse. A native packaging is always best. Currently there is big chicken and egg problem with Debian in the corporate world. Corporate guys want to be able to install software from ISV (like Oracle). Oracle, and a small number of related enterprise systems, really sit in a class by themselves. Ideally, they're installed on stand-alone, dedicated hardware, with the OS tweaked to the application's specification. Had an interesting discussion a few weeks back with a friend now working at PeopleSoft, tracing kernel issues through the application. For applications of this complexity, scope, and corporate profile, you pretty much _do_ knuckle down. Doesn't mean you can't play around the edges, or investigate alternatives. And for a wide class of applications (again: SAS in my experience), the so-called distro-specificity is pretty much a red herring. Though your support contract may call for it. In practice, the truth is that the Unix share of such ISV's operations is falling drastically. SAS now splits revenues between MF and 'Doze, with 'Nix a rapidly declining share (another reason I find it far less interesting these days). ISVs only provide their proprietary software as rpm because not many corporation ask for Debian. Corporation do not ask for Debian because most ISVs don't provide Debian packages. Last time I installed Oracle, it was some gawdoffal Java-based GUI installation. Granted, 2000/2001. Is there an RPM yet? IMHO, the only way to break this circle is to provide a way to install rpm that doesn't look like a hack. It's not a hack, it's an alien ;-) Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of Gestalt don't you understand? Save Bob Edwards! http://www.savebobedwards.com/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian, rpm and corporate world (was: Can rpm packages from other linux distribution be used on Debian?)
On Mon, 17 May 2004, Dominique Dumont wrote: Sure. Be if one can easily install rpm packages on a Debian system, this would be a good message sent to the corporate world. I don't think so. The kind of corporate type who even know there is such a difference will understand why .debs are better. The ones who don't will never get the message. Currently there is big chicken and egg problem with Debian in the corporate world. Corporate guys want to be able to install software from ISV (like Oracle). Oracle is a bad example. Corporate DBAs pick whatever platform Oracle supports. Oracle will never support Debian not because there's no one there who knows how to make a .deb but because it is to chaotic for their tech support model. ISVs only provide their proprietary software as rpm because not many corporation ask for Debian. Corporation do not ask for Debian because most ISVs don't provide Debian packages. Corporations do not ask for Debian because it is not on Oracles (or other ISVs) supported platform list. The operating system is just a commodity. It's the apps that drive the platform not the other way around. So the trick is to convince the ISVs that apps are worth porting to Debian. Once they are convinced, they'll work out how to make .debs fast enough. IMHO, the only way to break this circle is to provide a way to install rpm that doesn't look like a hack. I disagree. IMO the number one thing we can do to drum up ISV support is to hurry up and release sarge. Woody is so out of date it's a maintainence nightmare. For example the latest stable versions of SUSE and Fedora are using perl 5.8.x. Woody still has 5.6. There are enough minor differences between the two to significantly complicate QA work. And lets not even talk about things like g++ or NPTL. Two, customers (as opposed to random zealots on mailing lists) need to be really vocal about wanting genuine Debian support. Everytime you get a survey, write about wanting Debian support. Everytime you meet a sales rep, ask him so hows the Debian support coming? When ISVs sense genuine demand, they will figure out how to fill it. Three, we need to increase the amount of documentation for developers and users. The more Debian is a known quantity, the easier it will be for ISVs to work with it and around it. So to sum up, don't worry about package format. It's really not important at all. -- Jaldhar H. Vyas [EMAIL PROTECTED] La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian, rpm and corporate world (was: Can rpm packages from other linux distribution be used on Debian?)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) writes: and I found that it can't find files it need in deb DB,I had been tried to install it on debian, #rpm -ivh myproduct-xxx-xx.rpm the program will prompt: myproduct need perl 5.6, and the bash must be installed As other people have written doing this is not a good thing. Put yourself in the other position. I have a .deb file from Debian. I want to install it on a RH system. Should I insist that you must use dpkg to install it there? That would be just as silly as insisting the reverse. A native packaging is always best. Sure. Be if one can easily install rpm packages on a Debian system, this would be a good message sent to the corporate world. Currently there is big chicken and egg problem with Debian in the corporate world. Corporate guys want to be able to install software from ISV (like Oracle). ISVs only provide their proprietary software as rpm because not many corporation ask for Debian. Corporation do not ask for Debian because most ISVs don't provide Debian packages. IMHO, the only way to break this circle is to provide a way to install rpm that doesn't look like a hack. The example above rpm -ivh myproduct-xxx-xx.rpm would be perfect. The trick is that rpm need not to be the genuine rpm. It could be a program that would call alien, check the dependencies and then call dpkg. Or Debian could provide a 'drpm' that would do the same thing. The name is close enough to genuine rpm to give the feeling that yes, it's supported (it is also indeed a matter of subjective feeling) The major difficulty is: the installation must check the dependencies expressed in the rpm package by using the data stored in the Debian package database. Without a dependency check, installing a big product like Oracle will not be easy. So the questions are now: - does the Debian community want Debian to be used in corporate world to run *proprietary* softwares ? - Can tool like 'drpm' be reliable enough ? Cheers -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian, rpm and corporate world (was: Can rpm packages from other linux distribution be used on Debian?)
Dominique Dumont wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Proulx) writes: #rpm -ivh myproduct-xxx-xx.rpm As other people have written doing this is not a good thing. Put yourself in the other position. I have a .deb file from Debian. I want to install it on a RH system. Should I insist that you must use dpkg to install it there? That would be just as silly as insisting the reverse. A native packaging is always best. Sure. Be if one can easily install rpm packages on a Debian system, this would be a good message sent to the corporate world. Ian Murdock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote the following a while back. I am very interested in how it turns out. http://lists.progeny.com/archive/discover-workers/200310/msg0.html Summary snippet: We are also working with various parties to add/merge RPM support into the mainline APT, to allow Debian- and RPM-based distributions to be managed using a single APT codebase, and possibly even to allow Debian and RPM packages to coexist side by side. This work also aims to merge our various APT extensions (e.g., support for authenticated APT repos) into the mainline APT. It is our hope that a distribution-independent Anaconda and a distribution-independent APT (plus, eventually, a distribution- independent configuration framework) will, along with a stronger LSB, help unify further the various Linux distributions. So there is hope for your goal. But it is not here yet. A problem to be handled will be different distro policies. Look at the recent issues just discussed about installing and maintaining KNOPPIX on a hard drive. A fine system. Based on Debian. But still there are issues about interoperating packages. If something that close can't work transparently how well can packages crossing really different distros operate? I am skeptical. But cautiously hopeful. Currently there is big chicken and egg problem with Debian in the corporate world. Corporate guys want to be able to install software from ISV (like Oracle). I understand what you are saying. But they can install oracle and others today. My comment is that they want a vendor supported installation of the vendor application. Not an installation that a Debian expert made happen. ISVs only provide their proprietary software as rpm because not many corporation ask for Debian. Corporation do not ask for Debian because most ISVs don't provide Debian packages. We ask routinely. We get stone-walled routinely. But we do it anyway. However we have a lot of in house Debian expertise at my place of employment. Enough that vendor support was not the biggest lever. We do keep one RH machine (one vendor's supported platform, I am in the USA) so that when we need to bring a vendor in on a problem we recreate the problem there. Problems have always been identical in behavior on Debian systems too. But the vendor won't acknowledge it until we can get them a test case on their system. And by that I mean a system on the vendor's developer's machine. In the end I think we just need to wear down the folks supporting a particular distro instead of supporting GNU/Linux in general. And I am starting to see headway with our vendors. But it is slow going. IMHO, the only way to break this circle is to provide a way to install rpm that doesn't look like a hack. I previously gave one example of the MTA differences between distros. But let's take something simple which might seem reasonable to alien install like ncurses4, /usr/lib/libncurses.so.4. A common compatibility library needed for many RH programs to run on Debian. Woody does not have this. I think potato did and it was dropped and is now back in sarge. If you alien the RH package and try to install it on Debian it will install fine. Programs will work. But then eventually you will install a Debian package which requires not ncurses4 but libncurses4. The names won't match. If you try to install libncurses4 it will have file conflicts with ncurses4. If you try to remove ncurses4 first you will have dependencies problems. Anything built with ncurses4 installed won't know about libncurses4. Yes, this is all from personal experience. I created my own problems by not following the right policy. How do you propose to handle this type of case? Note that I am not disagreeing in principle to the fact that this would be beneficial. I agree with that. I am just asking how would this actually be done. I do not think it is possible. But I am very happy if I am proved wrong. So the questions are now: - does the Debian community want Debian to be used in corporate world to run *proprietary* softwares ? Personally, yes. I think many people have that ideal. It is written into the Social Contract. But the recent Debian Social Contract vote casts that as a majority opinion into doubt. So now I don't know. A contingent of vocal DDs would certainly say no. - Can tool like
Re: Debian, rpm and corporate world (was: Can rpm packages from other linux distribution be used on Debian?)
On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 04:10:39PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote: Dominique Dumont wrote: So the questions are now: - does the Debian community want Debian to be used in corporate world to run *proprietary* softwares ? Personally, yes. I think many people have that ideal. It is written into the Social Contract. But the recent Debian Social Contract vote casts that as a majority opinion into doubt. So now I don't know. A contingent of vocal DDs would certainly say no. I don't think the recent Social Contract vote affected that, really. The discussion has been almost entirely about what Debian should ship, not what our users should be able to do. -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
