> I am in the middle of discussion about how to package and install software = > on Linux for System z. There are people new to Linux involved and things li= > ke InstallAnywhere are coming up. What is your experience with non-RPM > inst= allers?
In a phrase: utterly unacceptable for commercial software RPM is a ugly hack, but circumventing the platform software management system -- crummy as it is -- is a dealbreaker, especially for any application you expect to charge money for. It makes it difficult to survey the system, determine if a system is at risk and do license management in any intelligent automated way. You also lose all the signature validation function and dependency management that RPM and yum does. I also want the applications I deploy to explicitly specify their environmental dependencies in a programmatic way so I can install only what is actually needed, not schlep everything+dog in an opaque blob. All the alternate installers do a miserable job of that compared with properly constructed repositories and yum. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
