Re: Debian vs Red Hat??? I need info.

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:37:39PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 07:07:00PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Previously Keith G. Murphy wrote:
> > > I must say, my subjective experience has been that rpm's are much
> > > faster to install something.  Of course, it's also faster to throw
> > > my clothes on the floor, rather than put them in the hamper...
> >
> > That is a result of the fact that rpm uses a binary database for
> > its data, while dpkg uses a large number of text-files instead. The
> > advantage of that is that it is robust (if a single file gets
> > corrupted it's not much of a problem), and that it is possible to
> > fix or modify things by hand using a normal text editor if needed.
>
> this is a tremendous advantage of dpkg, it should never be changed to
> use a binary database.

agreed, the plain text db is the right way to do it.

OTOH, it would be nice if dpkg did what apt does and uses a binary db
"cache" to speed up operations...updating both binary and text versions
as changes are made.

the text version would be considered authoritative (or "source code")
and the binary db would be the faster, "compiled" version. if the binary
version ever got corrupted for any reason, it could be regenerated
quickly from the text version.

dpkg would also need to detect whether the text version was newer than
the binary version and, if so, automatically rebuild the binary.

nice idea, perhaps...but i don't know how practical it is or whether the
time needed to maintain the binary db would more than offset the time
saved.

craig

--
craig sanders