Timothy R. Butler wrote: > If you are having dependancy problems - then please reconsider my Debian > argument. > > The most important thing isn't how many packages it takes to install > something, but how hard it is to install. If I download "superdupertool" and > it needs "foobarlib" I should be able to get that (in theory) automatically > with tools such as urpmi or apt-get. Rather than simplify in a way that > lowers efficiency, why not improve the tools so it can be done The Right > Way(tm)?
The tool that needs improvement here isn't apt, or urpmi, nor even RPM. It is the automatic dependancy resolver used by the package build scripts. It seems to do little more than just grabbing the relevant library names. The best solution to that, from an end-users perspective, is a bit intensive on the packaging end: Essentially, the dependancy resolver would get the list of libraries, and do an "rpm -q --what-provides foobarlib" for each foobarlib it discovered. It would then pass this list through uniq to remove duplicates. And for those of you who are about to say that urpmi will resolve the dependancy for you, save your breath. urpmi *can* solve the dependancy, but won't always. It has frequently had problems (I don't know now, I refuse to use it anymore) with nested dependancies that are caused by packages that have convoluted provides/depends trees. (i.e. package A requires libBC.so.1 which is provided by libbc1 which in turn requires BClibtools>=1.5 , which requires libDE.so.6 which is provided by libDE6. On installation of package A, urpmi would barf, saying that BClibtools requires libDE.so.6) Most of the dependancy resolving problems that have been complained about here over the course of the last 18 months or so, could have been solved by a) more robust auto-depends or b) correct explicit depends (which are frequently missing). Before looking to turn Mandrake into something it isn't, look at the real cause of your troubles. Mandrake is a good, solid distro with good tools and talented programmers, who don't have enough time to do everything required of them. Static RPMs will only put more work on them, bloat the distro and net the end-users nothing. If you need some old libraries for a particular binary provided by somebody other than Mandrake, then first look to see if those libraries are provided by current packages. And if they aren't, there are archives of Mandrake and Redhat that go at least as far back as Mandrake 6.0 and Redhat 5.2. You can probably find it in one of them. Static linking should only be used in places where it is absolutely essential. Especially in a distribution that intends to be commercially viable. And as for Mandrake copying Debian, look at Debian sid. Many Redhat tools are finding their way there, and there is some discussion of bringing menudrake to Debian. It works both ways. And that is the beauty of the Open Source movement. If somebody has a better way, you can incorporate it in your own. -- Anton Graham GPG ID: 0x18F78541 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
