[Wylug-help] Dependencies and RPM Hell

[Dave Fisher]

On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 10:26:27AM +0100, Andrew Teal wrote:
> Now I particularly need PHP4.3 and I'm back on rpm dependency
> problems.
>
> So, what's my best way round the problem? Find my way round (what
> seems a rather peculiar) dependancy maze, subscribe to Redhat, or
> change to another system? And would that be a complete change, or
> would there be sufficient compatibility to enable an update only
> change?

There are probably too many other factors involved to suggest what is
best for you, but for what it's worth, packaging and package managent
are core criteria by which I judge a distribution.

Debian frustrates the hell out of me at times, but I stick with it
because I remember the shere hell of managing dependencies on my
previous RPM-based distros (Red Hat and SuSE).  I understand that
Debian's APT dependency management stuff is now available on most RPM
systems and that it is well catered for in terms of repositories.  I
also believe that Gentoo provides similar functionality.

While Phil is right about the relative ease of compiling PHP from
source, lots of quick and dirty source-based installs can end up
producing a messy system, storing up worse dependency nightmares for the
future.  Frankly, I'd rather have an entirely source-based, but
rationally organised system, than an a higgledy-piggledy mixture of
various binary versions and source packages from all over the place ...
and anyway, binary packaging is what distributions are supposed to do
for you!

Does anyone know if it is as easy to build, install, remove, and
purge/clean-up an RPM source package as it is on Debian?  I'd be
surprised if it weren't by now.

As an absolute minimum, that would allow you to cleanly remove any
source-based installs that cause you grief at a later date.

Dave