(I wrote about several ideas in this mail, but they are all about urpmi
and friends, so I think it is ok to have them in one mail.)
(Also, I use 7.0 but have not fiddled with 7.1 beta or cooker a lot, so
please pardon if I ask for something already done)
On Fri, 26 May 2000, Hoyt wrote:
> Install of rpm "foo" fails because it depends on rpm "bar". Install of
> rpm "bar" fails because of libs****.so.o which is included in
> jhgy-1.0.rpm.
Why don't you just "urpmi foo" or use rpmdrake ?
(To mandrake people: urpmi is a *real* improvement to an rpm-based
distribution! Thanks!)
rpmdrake (because it is based on urpmi) is really more powerful than
gnorpm or kpackage (though I haven't tried them recently). It is really
clean to have un/install of package automatically propagate un/install of
other to respect dependencies.
urpmi needs some remarks, though:
-It is a bit slow, even on a fast machine when there are complicated
dependencies.
-It doesn't process everything when you put many (say, 30 or more) rpms to
install at the same time. I had to re-issue the command several times
until it installs all.
-/WISH/ a uninstall feature in urpmi command line.
-/WISH/ Some urpmi-based tool that help keep a bunch of machine's
installation consistent. (I used to have autorpm, but things could be
better, thanks to urpmi.) Basically, the slave machines would contact (or
be contacted by) the "master" machine to get the canonical "rpm -qa" list,
compare with the local list, install what you don't have (with automatic
dependencies), uninstall what you have but shouldn't, =but= have a config
file that says "don't install/uninstall things such as
XFree86-<myvideocard>, kernel, nfs, samba-server..." (BTW,
XFree86-Mach64|SVGA|... could be renamed to XFree86-server-*.rpm ...
perhaps you did this already for XFree 4.0)
-/WISH/ that urpmi handles dependencies for alien rpms: say, I find
package gluz-blabla.i386.rpm on the web, that needs libmesa or whatever
and Mesa gets installed automatically when I say :
urpmi ftp://gluz.org/gluz-blabla.i386.rpm
-/DREAM/ that urpmi handles dependencies when I find an alien .=SRC=.rpm
(or .tar.gz, but I never "make install" of a tar.gz as root). In the
former example it would install Mesa and Mesa-devel to compile gluz
automatically.
This will be of most importance for user John McLambda with non-intel
architecture (Mac, for example... ? John like to have an
easy-to-feed-with-software OS, like the one he used before Linux, but
those i386.rpm from the web are useless, and John fears a .src.rpm is too
complicated because at the moment no urpmi-like tools handles dependencies
for compilation ... )
I know this one is tough, you'll probably have to process output from the
make process of .src.rpm ... but, hey, a source package (or .tar.gz with a
.spec file included) is a really relevant form for distributing free
software.
-/WISH/ Integrate rpm/urpmi/rpmdrake with the desktop and file manager (a
bit like TkStep does).
Easing two-way navigation between file tree and rpm tree within a single
file manager environment could be *really* comfortable for the end user.
For now, some people I've installed Linux gave up because they found it
too cumbersome to look for documentation.
Right-click on a file could say to which package it belongs, you can then
jump to the list of files that this package includes, with several tabs
"documentation files" "other files", so the user can at a glance see if
the package include others executable and docs. I imagine them like the
"panelize" function of mc: just a normal window of the file manager like
any other, that allows double-click or right click like any other file
icon, but files are shown with they full path. Of course, double-clicking
on any doc file should bring a powerful and comfortable doc browser
(customizable, also. I still prefer "man" in a terminal and "less
/usr/doc/gluz/*" to browse the doc over all gnome-help-browser of kdehelp)
Oops ! I hope I wasn't to verbose ! :-)
Please tell me what you think.
--
St�phane Gourichon - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 - �quipe AnimatLab
"Bonjour, je suis un virus de signature de mail. Copiez moi dans votre
fichier signature pour que je me propage d�sormais avec vos mails. Merci."
