Re: When packaging systems go awry (Was: Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?)
H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 04:59:04PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Glenn McGrath wrote:
> > > I didnt realise that, what are its bad points... i guess it could make
> > > dependencies a bit tricker.
> >
> > The way redhat does it means you have to distinguish between installing
> > packages and upgrading them. If you install a newer version of something
> > without expliticly telling it to upgrade it, you end up with two
> > versions installed.
> [snip]
>
> Ick. If I had to choose, I'd stay away from rpm for this one reason alone.
> Experience shows that installing the same package more than once, esp.
> with different versions, gets you into an absolute, total mess.
> Theoretically, it should be OK, but in practice, there are just too many
> assumptions made by software, hardcoded paths, etc., that just do NOT
> allow it to live with another version of itself nicely. (Except if they
> reside in different chroot jails.) Not to mention bad interaction with
> other packages (package X requires package Y -- but which *version* of
> package Y if more than one are installed?)
Have you even used RPM? RPM does not install multiple versions of the
same package any more so than Debian will with packages named (for
example) libpng2 and libpng3. The only difference is that if you try to
`rpm -i` an upgraded package, rpm will stop in its tracks and complain,
whereas Debian will go ahead with it.
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