Accidentally replied to the wrong address. Here's the forward of the message I posted in reply to Jose Sanchez. -- Chris Armstrong http://penguinmints.cx
On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 06:54:53PM -0400, Jose M. Sanchez wrote: [clip...] > |Runtime upgrades. No matter how ya look at it dpkg with apt is nothing but > |heaven. apt-get install and apt-get dist upgrade. apt-get install > |is convince but isn't this what mdk strives for ? dist upgrade is not only > |convince but less hassle. > > Less hassle = bigger problems. > > There is a choice that was made with RPM, protect the user from doing > anything stupid. > > Deb does the opposite, assume the user knows what he/she is doing. > > Sounds like you've been upgrading .debs a little too quickly... > You've been lucky so far... I've been using unstable Debian for over a year (Potato, and now Woody). I've never run into a problem that I wasn't able to fix with more than 10 minutes of work, and they are few and far between. [clip...] > |in turn would > |cost me about 4 to 5 hours of my time. > | > > huh? I guess you've not tried gnorpm... but I digress. > > Gimp goes to 2.0 which requires a slew of updates. Those updates in turn > "break" other applications on your system. > > With DEB you can go ahead and install GIMP 2, breaking the other apps. Wrong. Debian would NOT by default allow you to install Gimp 2. apt calculates the dependancies so other packages WON'T break when you install one. Of course, if you want to force the install anyway, you can. > With RPM you are warned... yet you can still choose to overlook the warning > as you obviously do. It seems that you have done this so much that your > making the assumption that this is the correct way of doing things... > > Well I have news for you... it's not! > [clip...] > |as well as a lot of P.O.ed users/developers/whatever/whatever. So that > |virturally wipes out downloading the fresh new ISO or even buying a CD. > | > > Faulty logic. > > You're implying that DEB is unaffected by upgrade downtime... not so. It is affected far less. Sure, you can, every now and then, run into problems when you're running the unstable or frozen version of Debian. But even most of the times you _do_ run into problems, you can do an apt-get -f install or something just as simple. > |What about option number 2 ? Sorry, but if had to sys admin a > |network of over at > |least 5,000 users I wouldn't want to spend 5 hours upgrading packages and > |kicking RPM because of useless deps. > | > > Again failure to understand the process... > > Deb is permitting you to install upgrades which it shouldn't. Again, you're wrong. Same explanation I gave two paragraphs ago. > RPM does not... no thanks I'll stick with RPM... > > |Now let's look at this from a end-user perspective. > |Different scenario, same feelings. mdk is aimed at the desktop user, hence > |convince and friendlyness. Do the above and mentioned options of > |upgrading > |sound appealing ? Especially to someone likely coming from windows. > | > > Again faulty logic. > The assumption is that Deb is immune for trouble during upgrades... > Since it monitors them far less than RPM it is more trouble prone... I don't understand where you're getting that information. apt is quite anal about what it does or does not let you install by default. --- end quoted text --- Here's what I recommend: Don't switch to Debian's package management. I was with Bryan with this suggestion in the beginning, but I've changed my mind. What MDK needs to do is _rewrite_ rpm (keeping compatibility with the file format), making it easier and more convenient to use, and have better dependancy handling (You could also just build better front-ends, but I think we'd be better off with a more-well-thought-out rpm core). I also recommend Mandrake go with the central-repository method of PM, keeping a central repository of RPMs that have passed the guidelines of Mandrake's packages. Then develop a tool similar to apt which fetches and installs whatever RPMs. I know these things have been done to an extent with RPM, but I think they need to be done better, and I believe Mandrake has the potential to execute it quite gracefully. -- Chris Armstrong http://penguinmints.cx
