Prasanna wrote: > I dunno why but rpms just don't work for me... i end up extracting them > and pasting.. just getting job done... esp when everything needs > internet connection and all... > i try looking into /usr/share or /opt folders or /bin for package > management... most of the times the bundled softwares don't work... so > I end up making a script or sth.. yah maybe silly but I learn a lot...
rpms or debs are just packaging formats. The real meat of package management lies in the application that extracts information from these packages and makes decision on what needs to be updated/upgraded. There always have been good utilities to do these. RPM for rpms DPKG for debs Yum/up2date for RPM APT for DPKG The latter are just wrappers. Always remember that when you're doing a source based installation, you don't track changes. Nor does the OS for you because there's no such package manager present there. So in case of a source installation (as you've been doing), upon an upgrade, all you do is: 1) Scrap your old installation. 2) Install your updated software. Or club it like. 1) Overwrite your old installation with updated software. This process is NOT fine. What you miss here is the fact that just in case (and it happens most of the times) with the new release, if your application depends on an additional library, you have no idea. All you see is a failed build. Then you figure out why it failed. And then you install the related library development files and continue. Sure it works. But is not proper use of resources. 1) Because you don't want to waste space for additional sources. (More disk space) 2) Wasting CPU cycles which could be used in something else more productive. I do agree that most package manager these days expect the user to be having an internet connection be default. Unfortunately this is not the case in our country and many countries alike. One solution for this, atm for DPKG based system is, pypt-offline. For RPM based system I'm not aware of any. Ritesh -- Ritesh Raj Sarraf RESEARCHUT - http://www.researchut.com "Necessity is the mother of invention." "Stealing logic from one person is plagiarism, stealing from many is research." "The great are those who achieve the impossible, the petty are those who cannot - rrs" --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ FOSS Nepal mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/foss-nepal Community website: http://www.fossnepal.org/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
