[Gllug] CentOS and RHES

[Huw Lynes]

On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 12:28 +0100, Mark Field wrote:

> An apt-get upgrade will not upgrade any package that requires another
> new package to be install as a requirement.  See below

agreed

> for instance gnupg was kept back from the upgrade because it would
> have required the installation of two new packages which in this case
> were libreadline5 and libusb-0.1-4. to upgrade those which have been
> held back you must either do a dist-upgrade or an install of the
> package which will pull in the updated version and the new
> dependancies.

which marks one of the philosophical differences between RH and Debian.
Debian often has multiple versions of an app out is the same distro
letting the package management tools take care of the difference. The RH
approach is to let the package maintainer take care of it. However this
usually means that versions don't change during the lifetime of an
Enterprise release so new packages should only ever be installed if you
explicitly ask for them.

Both approaches have benefits. In the RH world if you have an
Enterprise4 box you know what major versions of everything it is
running. This makes life easier for third-party developers.

Debian obviously allows for graceful upgrades of servers over very long
periods of time. Allowing the system owner to decide when to change
major versions of packages. 

Sorry that was a bit of a ramble but I've been thinking about package
management quite a lot recently.

Huw

-- 
| Huw Lynes               | The Moving Picture Company  |
| System Administrator    | 127 Wardour Street          |
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