[wplug] SLES 9.0 questions

[Michael A. Smith]

I tried to resist. I really did, but I'm weak, and some of these 
statements, although more-or-less true, deserve qualification.

Vanco, Don wrote:

>	I don't have to read any more of this thread to feel certain
>that there will be someone there that will mention RPMs "dependency
>hell" - even though they don't use RPM.
>
...anymore.

>	I'm sure there's also the touting of Debian (all hail God APT!)
>and FreeBSD - and I would love to support those options, as soon as
>Oracle, Veritas, H-P, IBM, and "name your Enterprise computing company
>here" support them..... but it's not even on the radar.  Gentoo is the
>same...
>
RPM is in Portage, which means you can use RPM with Gentoo, although 
using when you don't have to would be a shame. So it's not really 
accurate to say Gentoo is the same. Come to think of it, I wonder why 
it's in Portage, and APT is not.

> - sure, it doesn't scream at you about unsatisfied dependencies -
>it just downloads the 25 additional packages to satisfy them so I can
>play Mahjong.
>
Use the -a option to check dependencies before beginning installation. 
Set your USE flags carefully to minimize (unnecessary) dependencies. 
There's a whole lot more dependency-handling power in Portage, too, but 
suffice it to say it's there.

>  Yeah - I know, apt and yum work on RPM distros, but I've
>broken more installs (of FC1 and 2) with those tools than I have with
>RPM alone - and once they're broken backing out can be a PITA (something
>RPM does quite well, right down to the config file level).  I would love
>for RH or SuSE to grab onto those tools and make them a bit more stable
>- but it's not possible to do so  without total control of the
>repositories - that's why YAST and RHN are tied to them in the first
>place.
>
Perhaps 'stable' was the wrong word to use here. Apt seems perfectly 
stable on Debian. The problem may lie elsewhere in the chain, say 
apt4rpm , for one possibility.

- Mike