:>You still gotta drive to install that, (always buged me to try and find
:>that many d**med floppys) We'll be look at a better interface for upgrades
:>than manual frubing your way thru rpm -F *.rpm soon, it does work but it's
:>not quite for the faint of heart. Trying it via rpm -U is even more time
:>consumeing... Have a try at rpm -F, and we'd love input on how you'd like
:>to see it improved
Hi
I am sorry to tell you that i disagree, but this method of "upgrading"
will only "update" those packages which are allready installed. Therefore,
in most cases you will not end-up with thruly "upgraded" system. In some
cases your system may actually end-up really screwed. Try "converting"
Suse- based system to Mandrake with "rpm -F *", and god may help you...
My sugestion would be to alter the "rpm" a bit in order to be able to say
"these packages are essential, so install them at any cost". Then the
"vendor" has to choose a set of packages which are "essential" and flag
them so. In this way, a fictive:
rpm --system_upgrade "DISTRO" DIRECTORY/*
will do something like:
1) find packages which are flagged essential for "DISTRO"
distribution
2) Install them, even if has to use "force", "oldpackage" or whatever.
3) "freshen" the rest of the packages
or
1) "freshen" all the packages
2) find out if there are some "essencial" packages left out and install
them even if it has to use "force"...
Now, the best way to "flag" the package "essential for Mandrake 6.1" would
be to have a flag saying so in the rpm package (somewhat similar to
"dependencies" stuff) As a nice side-effect, one could flag packages
"essencial for kde 1.2", or "essencial for gnome x.y" or so...
then, installing "gnome" would be a breeze again:
rpm --system_upgrade "Gnome 6.1" RPM_DIR/*
would do the trick. If this sounds like having a "mega-package", well in a
way it is. However, one should consult RedHat - having incompatible
versions of "rpm" would be awfull. (anybody cares to forward this letter
to RH-development?)
"Second best" solution would be a list of "essential" packages in an ASCII
file. that way it would be relatively easy to find out which packages MUST
be installed, and take care they really do get installed.
WDYT?
Denis
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Denis Havlik ||| http://www.ap.univie.ac.at/users/havlik
(@ @) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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