[plug] rpm's for diff platforms?

[Senectus .]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:22:00 -0400, bwarff <bwarff at obsidian.com.au> wrote:

> 
> its not quite like that .. each 'package manager' has its own way of keeping
> track of dependancies, so aslong as you stick to 'rpm' it wont be as bad as
> you just described.. cause rpm can find other installed rpm's ... that problem would show up
> if you use 'dpkg' (the debian) packages.. because they dont know about the rpm
> database...also source programs look for dependancies via /usr/include and /usr/lib ...  but i digress.
> 
> its really not that hard to use source packages themselves, and with a bit
> of care, you can do so safely, without damaging the integrity of your
> distribution and its package system.
> 
> if a distro is being 'nice' it will place all its packages in the /usr
> prefix, and it wont touch the /usr/local prefix (which is your playground).
> 
> thusly you can download a src tarball (foo.tar.gz rather than foo.rpm)
> and install it manually to /usr/local ... and try it out, without upsetting
> anything..
> 
> most source packages come with the gnu autotools, so to do as i described is as follows.
> 
> tar zxvf foo.tar.gz
> cd foo
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
> make
> make install.
> 
> ... after this has happened .. you may be lucky and get a menu entry on your desktop automagically,
> or you may have to do a bit of looking in /usr/local/bin to find the new program.....
> but either way the Suse rpm system should continue to work as expected.
> 
> dependancy hell is something quite tedious, but largely unavoidable - if you can imagine
> how the dependancies start to build up as you install layer upon layer of libraries,
> then you can imagine that changing one of the core libraries (that everything else relies upon)
> involves also then upgrading all the stuff that built upon that lib.. and so on and so forth.
> 
> Rod.
> 
Very informative thanks.. :-)
So just out of interest.. why is it Gentoo handles dependencies so
damn well yet RPM which has been around so much longer and has a
larger user base does not?
or is it not fair to compare them....
I managed to find evolution 2.0.1 for fedora (because suse doesn't
have an rpm of it believe it or not 0.o) and there are 20 something
dependencies I have to go and find to make it work.. what are the
chances that I will have to find dependencies for some of the
dependencies? *shudder*

-- 
Nothing dies faster than a new idea in a closed mind.