On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 02:11:08PM -0600, Daniel Taylor wrote:
> The way the software packages are put together. Not as in plastic and 
> cardboard, but the .deb or .rpm files themselves.

Sorry, you missed the sarcasm, please give an example of what is superior
about the debian package management system as compared to RPM.

> >*Please* will someone explain this dependencies issue? People like to 
> >spout 'dependancy hell', 'dependency consistency' etc. without ever 
> >providing any meat. It's like a marketing buzzword.
> >

> I forget that there are relative newbies present, sorry.

Ouch, was that an insult?

> Get something in the wrong order and your
> whole installation can end up horked while you have to sort things out 
> by hand.

rpm doesn't allow you to do this, you would have to use --force and/or 
--nodeps. At this point you're on your own, and have no right to complain.

> 
> There are two parts to dependency management:
> 1. How good packages are about listing their key dependencies. In my
>    experience .deb packages are better in this. I don't know why, as
>    there is no technical reason why they should be.

If foo needs bar, it needs it. Case closed. I see no reason why .deb
should be better than .rpm at saying 'i need BAR'

> 2. How good the package manager is about handling packages in dependency
>    order. dselect+apt rocks in this area, though the UI is not what I
>    would call endearing. Most of the "nice" package management frontends
>    come up short in this area for me.

and apt4rpm does it just as well (if not better)

-- 
Matthew S. Hallacy                            FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net                           GPG public key 0x01938203

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