[Gllug] Installing Stuff?

[Bruce Richardson]

On 12/11/01, 10:22:42 AM, Ian Scott <ian.scott at mediasurface.com> wrote 
regarding Re: [Gllug] Installing Stuff?:


> A word of warning on the distro's rpm package manager "programs" (eg. 
YaST,
> rpmdrake, etc).

> A big problem with these is that you don't necessarily know what they
> are doing.  They may well resolve dependancies automatically, but they
> may also just install rpms, and ignore dependancies!

This is more common if you (for example) install a SuSE rpm on Red Hat or 
use an unofficial package.  RPM will happily install rpms from one distro 
on another, unless dependencies prevent.

It's less of a problem with Debian packages simply because the list of 
official packages is larger and there's a published policy that 
unofficial packagers can follow.  Still, there's nothing to force 
unofficial packagers to follow the policy, so I only add in unofficial 
sources in extremis (e.g. the XFree86 4.x packages for potato - but even 
then they are packaged by a regular Debian package maintainer) and use 
tarballs where there isn't an official package.

-- 

Bruce

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