What's the best package management system?

[Calum]

i have heard of debian packages, slackware packages and red hat packages. Also you can get source code as a zipped archive or as a source rpm. in the absence of any other real deciding factor of 'what's the best distro', i think this is the one that i want to consider most important.

I am planning on replacing my computer next month and am hoping to get a new OS to put on there (i already have the last two versions of mandrake but want to use something other than it). it will likely be a linux, but which one? the supported package systems will be a major deciding factor, and to a lesser extent ease of initial system installation. Also, i'll need to be able to install openoffice and KDE (or GNOME if it's stable) on it for my girlfriend as both she and i will be studying as of the start of february. Need i say it should be as solid as a rock too (mandrake was not quite up to this task).

So, key points to consider:

1) are there any other package formats out there? (are there any non linux ones that are portable for instance?)

2) are there any good convertors from one format to the others available? I mean reliable ones. Really 100% reliable.

3) which distros support what package formats?

4) I know everybody will say 'debian package format is best, but i don't use it'. What are the pros and cons of the package formats you have tried?

Basically i'm not really after a dot point answers list from people, just some things to consider. ALso, i'm not really after a hyper specific 'what's the best for me' thing, just interested in what you guys and possibly gals think as i think package management is the key issue to decide between distros for me at the moment.

thanks in advance.....

[voidmain]

For the most part you can only use package in the format of your package management system of your installed OS. That is *.deb packages for Debian and Debian based systems. *.RPM for Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, Connectiva, etc, although not all RPMs work on all RPM based systems, most are targeted to specific distros. Then there is pkgadd packages in Solaris, AIX has it's own package management system, etc. There may be tools to convert some package types to others but I don't believe any are very mature.

The commononality between systems is the source itself. Someone has to take that source code and create a package for the targeted system if you want to be able to use the package management tools of that OS to install the package.

Now as far as which one is best, you will probably get as many answers for that as you will for the question "which Linux distro is best?". I like apt-get (Debian package management for *.deb files). I believe it has a few slight advantages to RPM. But I also happen to have a slight preference for Red Hat overall to Debian. I can't use *.deb packages on my system but I have found that there is a utility for Red Hat called "apt" which gives me the added apt-get functionality that is included with Debian's apt. The only real difference is it works with RPMs rather than Debian packages:

http://voidmain.kicks-ass.net/redhat/redhat_8_apt-get_must_have.html

I know that probably doesn't answer your question exactly. Another thing is you just can't take Solaris binary executables contained in Solaris packages and run them on other operating systems so you really can't make a package conversion utility. Unless you are converting a source package.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Calum]

hmm, but what if i had a red hat rpm with a binary for linux running XFree, and i wanted to run it under slackware? could i run macicalmysteryconverter2.3 on it and turn it into a tgz package (assuming the utility works) or is it just not possible to have such a utility?

What's the package format for OSX now i think about it? and will rpms work on debian or am i stuck with only .deb and source if i get debian? it would irritate me that an rpm containing binaries for X couldn't be installed on a debian or slackware system, you know? Also, many binaries are compatible across more systems than they have been tested on. Many red hat rpms have installed and run no problem on my various mandrake systems from 8.0 up. And that's different red hat rpms from 5 or 6 up. And i am sure many other distros can run each other's rpms too, so why should some deb packages also not translate perfectly? if only they could be converted to some useful format.

what i'm saying is, if it would run on there, can it be converted? I know trying to run one binary on another OS is doomed from start to finish (WINE will always be a failure to me for instance, even though i might be forced to use it soon when my university expects me to use shockwave     )  but that's off topic!

i know i said be general, but here's a specific (selfish) question as an on topic aside!: basically i will be choosing from one of these two sites to buy linux cds from:

https://select.worldpay.com/i/46387/order.html
http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/cheap.html

which gives me a choice of:
red hat
pink tie (clone of red hat)
slackware
debian
freeBSD
gentoo
vector linux (user friendly slackware)
turbolinux
progeny (based on debian)
best linux (similar to red hat)
storm linux
corel linux

now i don't give a single hoot about 'what's best' from this lot, but if anybody has any knowledge about which of these has what package management then please add two cents worth or more. i will be looking it all up for myself too, but again i blather and blither, sorry, back to the general discussion i think, or it'll just be another 'calum asks for help' thread!    

One last thing, void main, i take it that apt for rpm works only with rpms, and NOT with deb packages? i know you just said that (or i think you did) but i just ask it because i had hoped that the apt thing would work with real debian packages, and now i see it is just the same excellent setup but for rpms rather than debs.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
hmm, but what if i had a red hat rpm with a binary for linux running XFree, and i wanted to run it under slackware? could i run macicalmysteryconverter2.3 on it and turn it into a tgz package (assuming the utility works) or is it just not possible to have such a utility?

There are RPM utilities to extract the files out of an RPM without having RPM installed. However in addition to processor concerns of binaries (PPC vs x86 etc) these binary executables usually are compiled and linked to shared libraries. In order for them to run you must have the same shared libraries in the distribution you want to install them on (this is mostly what people are referring to when they say "dependency hell"). So unless you want to have every version of every library installed on your system I think it would be more beneficial to just get the source file in the form of (*.tar.gz) and "make;make install". However, the preferred method would be to get the package (RPM, *.deb, etc) targeted to your specific system so it can be properly managed in the dependency database and make for easy removal or verification. If you don't have a package for the app you want in a package targeted for your system  the next best option is the base source code.

[Calum]

hmmm... look at this:

http://www.freshmeat.net/programs/alien/
 

quote:Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and
slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another
distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use
alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it.

 

quote:(from another board)
An advantage of this, is that someone can give you a .tar.gz, you can
"alien'ify" it for your native package manager, install it through that
package manager, and then easily remove it later.  So, even if a ISV ships
you a package that is LSB compliant, but is a tar.gz, you can use alien to
LSBify it a bit more.

not tried it, not sure how well it works, but apparently it 'works on binary level' so i expect limited results.

[creedon]

Alien DOES work, but it's sporatic; sometimes it installs an app with no problem, other times it's nothing but a headache; usually dependancies will put the turd in the punchbowl.
I really don't see the problem; Debian has almost 8,000 official packages, and there's probably three times that many unofficial packages in .deb format available on the internet.  Just because a package is listed as "unofficial" doesn't mean there's trouble with it, it may be something that the Debian developers feel might not be quite right a far as free vs. non-free goes; they're very anal about that.  The app may work perfectly, but it doesn't meet Debians standards for "free" software.

[Calum]

yeah but there's bound to be a raft of stuff that i can only get via rpms, and what i want to know (in this example) is, will they install on debian? i've noticed a lot of rpms have problems installing in mandrake purely due to the slightly different directory structure between red hat and mandrake, so is this intensified when using less red-hat-like distros? for instance i will want to install FirstClass from here or here. This program is available only as an rpm and that is for red hat and mandrake. Can this be installed under debian? or slackware? or gentoo? or whatever? and so on.

[Master of Reality]

i dont have enough time to read all that writing above. So i will just reply to the first post.

Slackware can use tgz packages and rpm packages. The rpm utility isnt very reliable tho. Thats why slackware also comes with rpm2tgz which seems to work. I found the tgz packages to be faster installing than rpm. The only thing i thing i know that i like for debian is the apt-get. Slackware ncurses based pkgtool is really cool too.

[beltorak0]

I think I've said this here before, but after a few necessary RPM packages that could not be installed because of dependency hell, I stick to compiling sources.  I have, however, had few problems using the "--nodeps" flag for RPMs.  But if you go this route, don't install the latest package with slackware; unless you like hunting down lots of files to delete them and try again. One of the "missing dependencies" was Bash, which of course I was using  to type "rpm"!!!  whatever.

I have found so very few slack-packs on the net.  Even those with a ".tgz" were sources.  The slackware install ".tgz"'s don't check for dependancies, this gives you a great ammount of latitude for making a custom install (whereby you might have a few more-up-to-date libs in the form of RPM's installed), but it is a pain in the ass if you need the ensure that you have all the necessary dependancies to run software package $drop-name-in-here.  It will install, but it just won't run.

If you have a relatively fast computer (i have a 750MHz Duron) compiling takes little time.  The really big projects (open office for instance) come with thier own extractor.  RPM's are by far the most often binary packages I have found.  Especially when using the "rpm find" website    .  They keep a lot of packages in rpm form.

If i am not mistaken, gentoo is entirely source based, isn't it?  I know it's an LFS, but thats about all I know.  I hear that not fully reading the documentation is a quick (slow?) way to waste a lot of time.

The only problem I have with installing from source is the lack of tracking if you want to uninstall it.  "make uninstall" isn't always coded for in the make file, and names like "libgosflr.so.6.0.2" give little in the way of describing what the hell it is for.

I'm rambling.  I'll stop now.  What I mean to say is that RH RPM's are probably the most available binary packages, and that means that you might be better off with redhat.

-t.

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: beltorak0 ]

[Master of Reality]

.tgz doesnt check dependencies?? I have yet for one tgz package to not work. It also is faster on slackware 8.1 installing squid on the same computer as installing squid from rpm (200MHz 80Mb RAM).
try www.linuxpackages.net for slackware packages. I have found almost every package i need from there.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / B0b:
.tgz doesnt check dependencies?? I have yet for one tgz package to not work. It also is faster on slackware 8.1 installing squid on the same computer as installing squid from rpm (200MHz 80Mb RAM).
try www.linuxpackages.net for slackware packages. I have found almost every package i need from there.

Really? What about GCC not working because you didn't have GLIBC installed?

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Calum]

hm.

to be honest it sounds as if the problem is that not all programs are available as source. it's well and good to say 'use the source (luke)', but if a program is available for red hat and mandrake as a binary rpm, you're up a gum tree if your distro doesn't support rpm. Most notably i have tried to find rpm versions of quite a few debian packages in my time, and sometimes they just do not exist.

Also, if *IX wants to appeal to newbies, this habit of not including the libraries with the program is not going to help matters. No wonder most linux distros come with so many programs, no newbie could install programs themselves! Not sure what can be done about it though, i shudder to think what would happen if everything was shoved into each program's binaries, like in windows.

[voidmain]

What deb packages have you seen for Debian that are not available in source form?

[Calum]

oh now you're asking! i must look sheepish and say i can't remember to be honest! it was a good while ago and i honestly can't remember what they were for! i remember it was something i was after, maybe an mp3 player, or a graphical downloader utility or something i was trying to find a good one of, and i saw this description on a page that looked like just what i wanted, but then all the links led to debian files. So i searched on sourceforge and google but no mention of any other formats to get the program in (although i did find a mirror or two of the debian files if i recall correctly).

As i say, little credence is attributable to my story since i can't remember what they were or where they came from or when it was! sorry...

[ December 18, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[beltorak0]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / B0b:
.tgz doesnt check dependencies?? I have yet for one tgz package to not work. It also is faster on slackware 8.1 installing squid on the same computer as installing squid from rpm (200MHz 80Mb RAM).
try www.linuxpackages.net for slackware packages. I have found almost every package i need from there.

cool; I'll hafta check that out in a little bit.
thanks

-t.