Re: how rpm does it (Re: Dpkg Update Proposal)
On Wed, Jan 20, 1999 at 03:42:15PM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
|
|So rpm's method of upgrading is the same as dpkg -i, whereas dpkg has nothing
|equivilant to rpm's method of just installing a package.
|
|Oh and by the way, this user interface tends to confuse new users (at least
|it did me) who accidentially install many versions of the same package
|because they arn't aware they should be upgrading it instead.
Because you already have the Debian way in your mind when you were using
rpm. I remembered that I looked very hard to find out how to upgrade a
.deb in Debian by dpkg when I first switched from Redhat to Debian, but
of course I found nothing because 'dpkg -i' handles both :)
|I forget how rpm allows removing of one version of a package while leaving
|another version of it installed.
IIRC you need to specify the version number as well.
|Back end:
|
|I don't know much about this. I can intuit some things.
|
|Rpm can keep track of multiple versions of the same package that are all
|installed. Presumably, this means its package database indexes the installed
|packages by both package name and version, instead of just by package name
|as dpkg does.
|
|What happens if you try to install version bar of a package while version
|foo of that same package, which contains files of the same name, is
|installed? Rpm will happily overwrite version foo's files.
|
|What happens if you then remove version foo? I'm not sure, it's been a while
|;-). I can say that rpm doesn't deal with this very well. It either has to
|leave version bar's files around, or delete them, either action leaves the
|installed version foo in an inconsitent state.
Does rpm really do this? That's very silly...
|User interface:
|
|If we wanted to make dpkg have this capability, we could add a new command
|line flag, say "--keep-old-version" that makes "dpkg --keep-old-version -i"
|behave like rpm -i does.
|
|We would have to come up with some method to allow dpkg to remove one
|version of a package while leaving another version of that package installed.
I suggest that a version number must be given in this case, otherwise dpkg
will just exit, saying that there are multiple versions of the same
packages installed.
BTW, anyone has the feeling that the Debian package management system is
slower than RPM? Is it because the part in manipulating the package
information databsse is not doing as good as RPM does?
--
Rgds, [ E-mail: hajime@asunaro.ml.org / ICQ UIN: C30E6 ]
Anthony. [ http://icqtrack.hk.st -- Track your ICQ friend ]
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