[Wolves] *nix packaging; was RPM

[sparkes]

On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 10:04, Old Dan wrote:

> ::dons asbestos suit::
and with good reason too ;-)

> 
> Piffle.  It all depends on how well the database itself is kept up to 
> date.  It just so happens the Debian database is the best maintained, 
> but with woody that is at the expense of having less up-to-date 
> packages.  Intrinsically apt is no better than rpm IMHO.
I use woody on my server and get all my requirements forfilled.  I don't
need the latest packages unless there is a security fix which either
means the woody version is upgraded quickly to the new version or in the
case of libary incompatabilities an older package is patched and
released.

> Try installing from sources other than the Debian official ones and you 
> may find yourself in dependency hell again.  In fact, even in official 
> Sarge there are still some packages which just Don't Work right now... :)
> (Though as it's a 'testing' distribution that's not suprising...)

My laptop is on the other end of the scale.  To get the best out the
machine I need the latest packages.  So being a good debianite I
installed woody and used unoffical backports to get the bits I needed. 
Some testing and unstable packages, some offical packages and some
totally unoffical packages.  The result was the kind of mess you
describe.  An unmaintainable mess.  

So I switched from debian (woody) to Suse and the first package I tried
to add that didn't come direct from suse broke loads of packages.  The
problem took ages to fix.  Then offical suse packages started having
problems that took longer and longer to fix.

Now I run debain sid on the lappy and fingers crossed I don't get many
problems.  My source list contains (quick check) 9! entries for binary
packages.  Because I all of these contain packages that are developed on
sid (and not other debian versions) They all work together
harmoniously.  I am running the latest gnome packages, I get firebird,
mplayer and other fast moving packages updated almost weekly and I never
have any problems with apps.  Sometimes two sources might have different
names for the same lib and both try and replace the same legacy lib but
it is just as easy to tell dpkg to take what it is given as rpm ;-) 

It seems that unstable is more stable than stable if you stick with it
and don't try to mix and match.  My system is as up to date as most rpm
based systems and dependancy problems are a lot easier to fix ;-)

sparkes - apt through and through