Nicolas,
> I'm using mandrake distribution since quite a time now, and I'm especially
> happy to see the activity on the Cooker which allow to keep up to date
> with the latest release.
> Therefore, there's stg that I find a little puzzling : why is it that
> every time a new release (ie MDK 8) is showing, all the RPM packages
> suddendly requires dependencies that weren't needed with the latest
> "official" release (MDK 7.2 in this case) ?
Mdk 8.0 has glibc 2.2, while 7.2 has an older one. They aren't
compatible, that's why rpm is complaining. If you want to install the
mdk 8.0 openssl on you're 7.2 machine, then you'll also need to upgrade
glibc, which will then force you to upgrade most other applications as
well --> something you could consider to be a complete OS upgrade.
> Let's take an example : I wanted to try to install the latest openssl
> 0.9.6 from cooker instead of the 0.9.5 currently in mdk 7.2.
> I got a 'GLIBC 2.2' needed, but I don't understand why. Obviously openssl
> consists of libraries, so there shouldn't be real dependencies on glibc
> 2.2 (I know open ssl 0.9.6 compiles even xith the old libc5), so why do I
> get this kind of dependencies ?
Because with mdk 8.0 they were compiled against glibc 2.2.
> Is that the standard mandrake RPM policy to add require for the latest
> GLIBC (instead of requiring for example GLIBC >= 2.0) ? Do you use some
> kind of predifine macros to build your RPMs that tend to add these
> constraints ? Or could I just use '--nodeps' to force insalling those RPMs ?
--nodeps will install the rpm, but you won't be able to use it, as it
won't run with the old glibc. Actually, you could take the openssl
src.rpm and rebuild it on your system (glibc 2.0?) and the install the
resulting rpm. That will (probably) work.
> I had a similar example hen I wanted to try to install xmms 1.4.1 over mdk
> 7.2 -> missing libstdc++ dependency.
> All in all, I find it very annoying to be forced to upgrade the whole
> system to install only a few recent packages (not that I don't like
> upgrading to the latest MDK distrib, it's just I'd like to do it 'step by
> step' before resintalling the whole distrib).
Nobody forced you todo anything. Mandrake is working on their next
product, which has the latest stuff in it. You're experiencing some
problems because the latest stuff is built on glibc 2.2 (I guess this is
where innovation hurts). But, since the sources are also available, feel
free to recompile them (src.rp,) for your system, you have the freedom
to do so.
Or you could considering upgrading to 8.0 beta.
It's kind of funny that these issues still arrise --> since cooker is
_known_ to be a development distro --> things _can_ and _will_ break,
see the cooker page on http://www.linux-mandrake.com/
> While RPM was meant to be a format to ease packages update,
beleive me, it does. The fact that rpm complains when you try to install
a package that doesn't "fit" is one of the features of rpm. I wish
Microsoft had something like this --> it would make windows a lot more
reliable. I've yet to see a packaging system with the functionality that
rpm provides, Sun's Solaris (jump- / web- start) packages don't even
come near to what rpm can do.
> it seems
> there's a trend with various distrib where upgrading some packages with
> those from a more recent distrib is impossible (but not due to missing
> libraries functionnalities, due to the way the RPM files are build).
Innovation.
> Am I all wrong ?
I'm afraid you don't see the whole picture. Of course what you're
experiencing is an inconvenience, but rpm is actually doning it's job
--> it's designed this way. RPM won't let you get into .dll-hell
(windoze?).
> Taking the example of openssl or xmms, could someone
> explain me why the packages in MDK 8 could not be compatible with MDK 7.2 ?
see above.
> I really think that would be a major advance if distrib 'n' could be
> compatible with 'n-1' or 'n-2' (as long as there're no such changes as
> those from replacing libc5 with libc6 of course).
Well, this is one of those changes ;-)
> Thanks for any explanations on this subject (and congratulations to all
> the Mandrake people for such great distribs !)
Thnx!
Stefan
