[TAG] (admin) Status

[Thomas Adam]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 09:20:56PM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

> If it doesn't cause Heather and Thomas too much pain, suffering, and 
> tearing out of hair, I have some comments to make about a few quotes:

Sorry matey, but this'll have to be deferred until next month - I've just too
much on right now to worry about it. I'll add my fleeting comments to this
now though.
 
> "But some sort of automation is desperately needed here."
> 
> This automation is available; Thomas told him about it. It's available 
> in just about every distribution under the sun. Debian, IMO, does the 
> best job of any distribution I've seen when it comes to this; apt (which 
> determines and resolves dependancies) and debconf (which configures the 
> software) are wonderful tools.

debconf is not standard to all packages. It is used only where the maintainer
of the package feels that certain questions asked can benefit the automation
of config files for the said package being installed. What actually
configures the package are the {pre,post,conf}scripts. These are always
provided as part of the package system.

> Other than that, apt is available for RPM based distributions, Mandrake 
> has rpmdrake, Fedora Core has yum, Ximian have Red Carpet (though that 
> only really installs GNOME right now, but it should be better integrated 
> into SuSE RSN, now that both companies are owned by Novell), as Thomas 
> noted, SuSE has YOU, and according to what I've read, Gentoo's Portage 
> system does this too.

These are all front-ends, but what underlies them in all cases here (besides
Gentoo) is the raw RPM command. No matter what you do to escape it; it is this
command alone that is being manipulated. No matter how much gloss you put over
it in terms of a front-end.
 
> Here's a tip, even if it does mean using "all that command-line 
> nonsense". If you want to install multiple packages which depend on each 
> other, specify all of them in the same command.
> 
> rpm -i package1 package2 package3 ... packagen

I cannot recommend enough:

``
rpm -iUv package1 package2 
''
A much safer alternative.

> rpm will figure out which order to install them in to resolve 
> dependancies. You might even be able to do this in Konqueror, by 
> selecting multiple rpms and launching them.
> 
> "Now it's only fair to tell you that a lot of folks recommend a 
> different procedure for installing KDE. First, boot to the Linux command 
> line instead of the GUI"
> 
> No, it should never be necessary to reboot to upgrade anything. Sure, if 
> you've upgraded the kernel, it's necessary to reboot to *use* it, but 
> installing software should not require a reboot. (That is, unless you're 
> changing distributions).

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?