On Sun, 21 Oct 2001 19:38:02 -0500, Joseph Zitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In trying to upgrade any but the most trivial software via RPM, I > invariably get stuck in apparent deadly embraces where everything > demands different version of everything else, and each of a pair of > RPMs demands that the other be installed before it can be. > > Am I missing something? Am I taking warning messages too seriously? Is > there something that I'm not understanding that I should? I've looked > at all the documentation that I can find, but remain mystified and > frustrated.
Welcome to 'dependency hell', the largest known problem with RPM. Open source software prides itself on its high level of code reuse, leading to more rapid development and higher quality code. However, this requires all dependencies to be satisfied for an app to work 100%. The result is a complex web of dependencies which can be extremely annoying to resolve. There are four main ways to solve this: 1. The manual method This involves finding dependencies manually as required. http://www.rpmfind.net/ can be very useful for this purpose. 2. urpmi Mandrake have developed their own dependency resolution utility, urpmi. It can be accessed via the command line or through the Mandrake Software Manager. 3. apt-get Debian have developed the powerful apt-get system to do a similar job to urpmi. It has been ported to RPM from Debian's native DEB package format, and distributions like Conectiva use it as their main update tool. It has some problems with Mandrake and Red Hat RPMS, so is not part of the official distribution (it may be in Contribs). 4. rpm-get A command-line app designed to be similar to apt-get. It has been written specifically for Mandrake and Red Hat systems, and is part of the official Mandrake distribution. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan Help Microsoft stamp out software piracy. Give GNU/Linux to a friend today.
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