Hoi Pekka,
I should have phrased my point better. Thanks for point that out. To make it
short (more elaboration below):
Instead of hard-coding the information about package replacements and
package importance into an update-tool, it could be put into the package
header and rpm should be able to read and *use* that information for the
"Freshen" command.
Additionally with "rpm" I'm not necessarily referring to the program
/bin/rpm itself. The described functionality could be placed in an auxiliary
program -- but that program should be distributed together with rpm!
On Sat, Aug 05, 2000 at 04:13:32PM +0300, Pekka Savola wrote:
> All of this is possible with current versions of RPM.
Not really. The fields are there, but the information doesn't get used and
thats why they are often not filled out, even with RedHat's own RPMs. For
example, while the package might have a "Replaces" field, RPM, in contrast
to Debians apt-get, it won't look at it and say (for example)
"samba-common replaces samba and suggest samba-server plus
samba-client, so thats what I'm going to use for the update"
Instead, RPM will see that "samba" has vanished and complain -- without even
informing the user that replacements are available.
> The problem here is that you should be able to know _before_ downloading
> xxxx megabytes of RPM's which packages you _do_ need for upgrade. And
> which packages, while not in fact Required, _should_ be obtained and
> installed (an example: if you had lpr packages, upgrading to latest beta
> should probably replace it with LPRng).
Hmm. Good point! So whats needed is a way to look at a directory chock-full
with RPM's, download only the headers and extract the relevant information.
> You should be able to compare an upgraded and installed system and
> honestly be able to say they have the same packages installed,
> configurations are similar etc.
Thats what apt-get *can* do through the added information, which was my
initial point. I probably should have elaborated a bit more. Debian packages
also contain fields like "Suggests", where a package can say that, while not
required, certain other packages would be usefull together with the current
one. Packages also have a "Priority" header, whose contents range from
"important" and "standard" to "optional", again giving the packaging toolkit
more information to work with.
Regards
---Ingo Luetkebohle / 21st Century Digital Boy
its easy to stop using Perl: I do it after every project
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