Debian mirrors and sources.list selections

[David Gibson]

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 04:46:40PM +1000, Drake Diedrich wrote:
   [snip]
>    rpm-apt .. I can't imagine how it would cope without the package
> dependency/conflict information that is built into each .deb.  Seems like it
> would work for simple dependcies (libc6, libgtk1.2, ...), but fail for more
> complex cases (libgtk1.2-dev conflicting with libgtk1.1-dev due to common
> include files, ...).  Providing that information is how Redhat sells their
> online update service as I understand it.  RPM-the-format doesn't really
> have a good place to store it, and even if it did most RPMs (especially from
> third parties) wouldn't have it.

That's simply not true.  Rpms have dependency and conflicts
information, both autogenerated and specified in the .spec file.  Last
I checked (which was a while ago) it didn't have the "suggests" and
"recommends" categories of deb, but that's not necessary for apt to
work (in fact it's potentially confusing).  Last I checked it also
didn't have "or" dependencies (depends on (exim | sendmail | qmail |
smail)).  But Red Hat's packages are structured to avoid needing them
so much (by more aggressive use of "provides" and virtual packages).

The only thing it doesn't have is the global package listing with this
information collected in one place.  Which is why, you'll notice, the
person suggesting it was pointing to a third party "apt-rpm" server
not Red Hat themselves.  I assume this server downloads all the
package files and generates the appopriate indexes from them, not a
inherently difficult process.

-- 
David Gibson			| For every complex problem there is a
david at gibson.dropbear.id.au	| solution which is simple, neat and
				| wrong.  -- H.L. Mencken
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson