On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 04:54:03PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: > Frank Lichtenheld wrote: > > On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:51:27PM -0400, Kris Deugau wrote: > >> (Mildly amusing sidenote to this discussion: I'm finally convincing the > >> senior systems guy that Packages Are Good, and now developers for the > >> upstream OS seem to be telling me Packages Are Useless, because I can't > >> even count on a critical dependency being installed via the package > >> system. <g>) > > > > ? I don't see that beeing said in the thread. Could you point out that > > for me? > > Hmm. Not explicitly stated, nor really implied, but several people > commented that a system may have backported packages, packages from > testing/unstable/experimental, software that's installed from source and > which the package manager is therefore completely unaware of - in other > words, no matter what you might find in /etc/debian_version or some > other nominal reference, the configuration and binaries on the system > may not resemble a stock install of that release at all.
But all of these problems except for the "software not installed as a package at all" are actually solvable inside the packages system. It is not solvable by polling a simple one-line file because the system is too complex for that, but the vastly larger /var/lib/dpkg/status has all the information you need. So your reason for stating (admittely half-joking, but still) that packages are useless is because they can't help you if you don't use them? That's too lame to be funny, IMHO... Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www: http://www.djpig.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
