LSB compatible Samba ?

[Michael Sweet]

Gerald Carter wrote:
> ...
> So I know I'm going to regret this, but no one has made any technical
> points about RPM vs. dpkg.  It's all "XXXX is superior IMO because
> it handles XXXXX better".  But no one has offered anything but
> opinions about these statements.

OK, here's one opinion - both RPM and dpkg are flawed because they don't
easily allow a non-source build of the package (e.g. here are the files,
package them), and neither allow you to map files in a build directory
to the installation directories - you have to do it all in makefiles
which can be difficult if you want portability.

In addition, dpkg required root permissions to build a package at all
because you can't specify the file permissions in the package support
files.  RPM, at least, can do this as long as you make the RPM build
directories writable for your developers.

>   A single common interface for packaging makes it
>   easy for application writers **and users** to
>   have the freedom to switch among Linux vendors
>   at will.

I'll go a step further - this should apply to all UNIX-based OS's.

However, any vendor that wants to support UNIX has to support more
than RPM.  Don't get me wrong, the LSB is a good step towards cross-
Linux compatibility, but there is more to UNIX than Linux.  Developing
packages for multiple OS's has been a major pain for us, which is why
I developed EPM:

    http://www.easysw.com/epm/

> Many people I know who are used to RPM based distros hate
> Debian because of the different packaging interface.  So
> say what you want, but a single common interface for
> packaging, promotes a users freedom because of the lack
> of a need to relearn.

Forcing RPM doesn't prevent relearning - only a small fraction
of the UNIX world uses RPM...  IMHO, providing the native
packaging format (bff, pkg, rpm, deb, inst, depot, setld, etc.)
is the only way to do this, short of dumping all of the
packaging systems and rolling your own installation scripts
or "setup" interface (something else that EPM does... :)

> So again I ask, if a packaging system installs, removes,
> and detects dependencies, what more do you need?  The FTP/HTTP

Upgrades?  Configuration file support.  Init script support.
A flexible build interface.  *Software patch* support.

> updates are fluff and can be added on top.  From a sysadmin

It may be fluff to you, but a lot of vendors (Microsoft included)
are providing software updates via the Internet.  It would make
sense to support that in the package management tools rather
than relying on a hundred different add-ons that stop working
when the underlying package management programs are changed...

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products                  mike at easysw.com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com