-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Kenneth Aar wrote: > Janne Karhunen wrote: >> RPM is a powerful tool for system administrator, but as ironic as it >> is, end user is much happier with windows installer :/.
Maybe. *Some* end-users prefer a windows installer. But it's not because they prefer to shoot themselves into the foot with an inferior software management concept that we should actually give them the gun. Everyone talking about end-users and desktop all the time. You seem to forget that Linux is also strong in the server room, where we have to keep on working on its adoption for mission-critical tasks. For things like those, having a very strict and powerful package management system is *crucial*. What you describe as "dependency hell" is a *feature* that's miles ahead of what Windows provides as software management facilities. You're asking for having bigger base packages, but many more people are asking to have *smaller* packages, better split into subpackages, because a) embedded systems: only run the bare minimum because of hardware constraints b) security: only run the bare minimum because any unused application that's installed is an additional potential security risk Don't just discard those very important aspects that are a key element of the stability of most Linux systems, just because you think Linux should be like Windows. Pushing Linux onto the desktop and for everyone's use should never, ever compromise the stability, consistency and technical superiority of Linux compared to Windows (and even to some Unix derivates). > I really think dependency hell could be avoided if the Open source > community could begin to consolidate a few things. > Take bugzilla for instance. Why hasn't anyone come up with the idea of > making bugs easily available across distros and up and downstream > searchable/redirectable? This way if a bug is filed in the wrong place Amongst others, KDE and GNOME have a bugzilla. Whenever someone working for a distribution (SUSE, Redhat, Fedora, Debian, ...) notices a bug or an improvement, he reports it upstream. It's true for many other projects as well. > we could redirect the bug to the right place without need for filing the > bug again. Also if the bug is reported in different places or indeed is > filed in several distros by different users we could more easily see > where we should put our focus. Or if this is a up or downstream issue. Why do you get the impression that's not already happening ? :) > If we transfer this kind of thinking to dependency issues, it would > probably start solving itself in a short manner of time. Not really. Package dependencies are related to packaging. It's none of the amarok developers' business if when installing my amarok 1.3.5 RPMs, you get a missing dependency on e.g. libmad.so.X > Another Idea I'm thinking of is making the package managers do the > dependency searches for you. Instead of letting a newbie search the web > for a package he is missing. download it, install it and find that he is > missing yet another package. The RPM could search the web for the user > and come back with a dialog like this: Err... I wonder how you're managing your Linux system. Ever heard of YaST2, y2pmsh, yum, yumex, apt-rpm, aptitude, smart, ... ? > "You are missing package x. We can't find this package in your repos. > But this package [package name X], found at www.example.org seems to be > what you are missing. Should YAST download this package and install it > for you? YES / NO ... That's a valid point. The only issue I see nowadays with not finding dependencies is when you install packages from a 3rd party repository that depends on another package that's in another 3rd party repository. e.g. you install some package from my (suser-guru) repository that requires another package from packman, and you don't have the packman repository in your installation sources That's really the only situation where we have to improve things. Everything else is working really fine, given you're using a capable package management frontend (such as YaST2, y2pmsh, smart, yum, apt-rpm, aptitude, yumex, ...). Actually the packman folks and I started discussing that idea with the SUSE staff, to have YaST2 fetch a list of available 3rd party repositories regularely and propose a checklist to the user, so she can easily add another repository. That could also make it possible to say "you're trying to install xxx that requires yyy. but yyy is available from installation source (repository) zzz. do you want to add zzz to your list of installation sources ?" But actually that involves a number of issues, especially from the legal point of view. Packman and my repository include a number of packages that are .. well... "touchy" for patent licenses in some countries (mostly the USA), like mad, lame, mplayer, ... AFAIK Novell's legal department is currently checking whether something like that is feasible or not. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDZJY+r3NMWliFcXcRAlWkAJ9ug9rtm6mX44Vtd5PFqqQ14gIEsQCcDy2S yC8q0pqECdyERi7GX1u+kGM= =1K5D -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
