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Fedora Project to Help Revitalize RPM
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Dec 15, 2006 03:48 AM
from the breathing-life-back-in dept.
from the breathing-life-back-in dept.
-=Moridin=- writes "The Fedora Project has announced plans to revitalize RPM, the package manager used by many Linux distros. According to the announcement, 'Job #1 is to take the current RPM codebase and clean it up, and in doing so work with all the other people and groups who rely on RPM to build a first-rate upstream project.' For more information, see the the RPM web site and the new wiki-based RPM FAQ. The issue of RPM's upstream development has been a thorny issue ever since Jeff Johnson, the original maintainer of RPM, left Red Hat."
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First improve the UI (Score:4, Insightful)
RPM has about 30 options you can enter from the command line and if you don't get the command right it just echoes the list back at you, as if that is any help. Most shell commands try to help by providing a few simple examples.
Package managers, like revision control systems have complex functions and their help systems need to do more than just say here are the options you can use
You Have It All Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, to a large degree it is more important that better rpm bindings (especially for python) be written. This is how yum works -- it is able to do all of this using the python bindings, instead of calling the rpm tool itself. Calling rpm -i foo.rpm should really be a last resort option. (For those that are curious, yum already has a --localinstall option for doing this.)
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Re: (Score:2)
Repository management works well in pkgsrc with pkg_add, pkg_del, pkg_info, etc. There is no need to add an apt or yum lookalike over the top, and the interface is simple and intuitive.
The situation with yum seems to be that rpm is in the THB (too hard basket) and they are writing a wrapper to hide the problem.
Re:You Have It All Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Yum and others handles repositories and dependency solving.
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Re:You Have It All Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at the output from 'dpkg --help' and compare it to RPM's, RPM provies a much longer list of options, the vast majority of which no one ever uses, burying the commonly-used functionality in a sea of terse explanation.
The RPM tool needs to be replaced - possibly with another version of the tool, but removing all the extra cruft from the way it's used. It makes no sense to say 'Well, of course it's messy because you shouldn't be using it'. If the tool exists, it should be usable.
Even with the APT frontend picking up the slack, Debian has managed to keep dpkg easily usable and keep the help options straightforward, to the point where I rarely have to dig for what I need to do. When I go to work and have to work with the package management tools on Fedora (yum on our workstations) or RHEL (RPM on our servers), I hear nothing but complaints about usability, speed, and reliability from coworkers.
RPM needs an overhaul, badly, but I doubt it'll get the one it needs.
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Re:If you want something user friendly ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have a... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I have a... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I have a... (Score:4, Funny)
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Code cleanup... (Score:5, Funny)
Easy job, this took care of it.... :
rm -rf
Has RPM improved at all? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who t
misread (Score:4, Funny)
Anti-FUD Post (Score:5, Insightful)
2) RPM is not responsible for _solving_ deps
3) RPM is both a file format and a program to use the format
4) RPM is _not_ a package manager
5) RPM has little to do with how much you may love your Debian distro of choice (unless you made that choice solely on the file format of the packages used by your distro)
6) The existence and use of RPM does not work against your distro of choice, and so there is no reason to fear/hate it
Come again on that one? (Score:5, Informative)
That would be the Redhat Package Manager, right?
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Pro-FUD Post (Score:2)
*Package-format* to take care of ? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's app packager that still think in term of "packaging format" that should die.
What are you thinking ? That because a packager did pack a "RPM" then it surely going to work on any RPM-based distro ?
You're plain wrong. If it happens to work that way in the DEB-world (one single DEB good for most cases) it has nothing to do with DEB being a supperior format or whatever. It's just that DEB happens to be the native format for Debian and most DEB-using distros happen to be debian customized variants with a different name.
Packages are only a practical way of storing together the files, the special install scripts and the dependencies needed to install an application. Anyone is mostly as good as any other of them (and thanks to some facility like "alien", may be substituted freely), with maybe the exception of Slackware's tgz (less informations in there).
What package manager have to think about isn't the package format in itself. They have to think about the distribution which they are targeting. Each distribution out there, even if it uses a common packager, is a different mix of libraries and application versions.
A rpm designed for Red Hat *may* work on some RH-derivated clone, but it may *not* on opensuse because this is a different distribution (which in fact started it's life as a Slackware derivative and added aspects of RH over time [wikipedia.org]).
If RPM get deprecated and replaced by DEB in most distros that currently use it, this won't make the packager's task less difficult. They'll be only using DEBs, but they'll still have to build a different DEB for each different distribution familiy.
Most problems that people are complaining about will still be here : YaST will still be as slow as usual, some badly behaved package managing systems will still break often, and users who didn't download the correct package will still encounter dependency hell.
In fact, more confusion is likely to happen among inexperienced users : "But I did download the DEB, my system is DEB-based, why doesn't it work ? - Yeah but did you download the Debian-specific or the RH-specific DEB ? - What do you men ? It's all DEBs it's all the same stuff... - (Sigh)"
The best way to avoid dependency problems isn't switching the package format, but either :
- using static and/or libraries included binary packages (like OpenOffice) and you're sure everything is included in the package. But then you loose all advantages of system-wide updates or upgrades (*).
- using a package reporitory that contains RPM specifically designed for YOUR distribution (get rpms for your openSUSE from Packman [slashdot.org] instead of some random site). Which is the method I recommand the most.
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(*) - What I mean is that is some library, like ffmpeg has newer ability (like better capability at handling latest Microsoft WMV format), on a system that uses system dynamic libraries (like say VLC installed from Packman on a suse Linux), you immediately take advantage of it. On a system were every application has it's own set of libraries (like OS/X or GoboLinux or a package with all libs inside), you'll have to wait until next release to take advantage of it.
Same for security : when a security flaw was found in "libtiff", under Linux, you have only to download its patch and all your graphics applications are secure again. When WMF flaw was found on Windows (were mostly each application has its own copy of WMF routines), you had to check each application and patch it (at least microsoft designed a tool to simplify the process).
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Re: (Score:2)
What would you call it, then?
Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)
You can roughly emulate package dependency using specific files (or symlinks) within packages which are just there to deal with dependencies, but it's messy compared to a system designed properly from the outset.
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Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bollocks. You might claim (although I'd probably disagree) that apt under Debian has an easier time of resolving dependencies than does yum under Red Hat. But apt under Fedora vs yum under Fedora? Probably fairly equal, I'd say. I'm also slightly bemused by your implication that RPMs are dependent on files, rather than on other packages. Where on earth did you get that one from?
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Fedora Project to Help Revitalize RPM (Score:5, Funny)
[dodging tomatoes]
While they're at it (Score:2, Insightful)
Just switch to apt (Score:4, Interesting)
The task of migrating rpm packages over to the deb format would certainly be a massive undertaking, but the popularity and reputation of the Debian packaging system shouldn't be ignored. With the rapid growth of Ubuntu, the interest from historically Linux unfriendly third-parties in releasing packages in a Debian format is hard to ignore. Fedora could benefit from the growth of Debian based distributions, getting a lead on other rpm distros that choose to stick with a troubled package format. They could do what any good distro does these days: focus on offering a quality user experience, choosing the best technology available to fulfill these ends. Package conflict / dependency resolution is a typical reason people turn away from an rpm based distro, even Linux altogether.
I have a suggestion (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays we have broadband, CPU cycles to spare and plenty of GB of storage. Despite the size of the repositories, there will always be a need to build and install the odd third-party package. For someone who knows what they're doing, it's as annoying as hell to be told on the package homepage I need to have libfoo installed; then have the configure script conk out because libfoo-devel isn't installed. For a n00b, it's much worse, and can be a dealbreaker.
Separating out the -devel stuff was the right idea a few years ago; but today it is doing more harm than good. Please, let's have all the -devel files in with the main package. A user who really wants to keep everything trimmed down as lean as possible can always delete the files they don't need afterward.
Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apt is a program that automatically resolves dependencies and fetches packages to install, among other things, and it sits on top of a packaging system, like dpkg or even RPM.
As for dpkg vs RPM, I can only say that I've never had as many problems with dpkg as RPM, especially when installing 3rd-party (unofficial to my distro) packages. I've also had fewer instances of "dependency hell" with dpkg than with RPM, and it's always been easier to fix when I have, but that has more to do with the package and distro maintainers than it does with the packaging system.
Yum, a popular RPM-based manager (like apt, but specifically for RPM) was certainly a total piece of shit the last time I tried it. Took about 10 times as long to do anything as apt would have for the same operation, and I'm not exaggerating. Maybe it's gotten better, but as recently as a couple years ago it was a huge pain in the ass to use. Apt for RPM seemed pretty good at the time, but I've not used it since. I don't even bother with RPM-based distros anymore, as, of the three systems I've used (dpkg+APT, Gentoo's Portage, and RPM) it was, hands down, the worst. It may be better these days, but then again I've found the recent Fedora builds that I've tryed out make me feel restricted, while simultaneously making me do more work than a modern dpkg-based distro probably would. For some reason, distros based on Debian seem to pick better defaults for newly-installed packages than RPM-based ones do, though I don't know why that is.
For reference, I've mostly used Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, and Ubuntu over the years, with lesser but non-trivial amounts of time spent with Red Hat/Fedora and Slackware, and a tiny bit of time with Suse, so any bias in my opinions on the matter may be tied to this, but I really have found that package management was only ever something that I dreaded dealing with when I was on Mandrake and Red Hat/Fedora, and I didn't work with Suse enough to form an opinion on it. Switching to mostly non-RPM distros a few years back made most of my package management woes disappear instantly.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Informative)
Worth to mention that apt now deprecated in favor of aptitude. Aptitude marks packages installed as part of dependency resolution and when you later remove the installed software, it would also remove all automatically installed packages.
+100. yum is dumbest and slowest tool I have ever seen. Especially when people try to pitch it against apt-get. And aptitude is ages ahead of any package management RedHat ever implemented.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I have always used apt-get instead of aptitude.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience of apt-get has been that it has pretty terrible ways of dealing with broken dependencies in the RPM database. When I tried it on a database with broken deps it decided to automatically "fix" the database by removing any packages that had any broken ancestoral dependencies. The result was that it automatically uninstalled the entire distribution - I've never touched it again since this experience. Whilest I have had problems with yum, it
Re:I've got something to say! (Score:4, Interesting)
I heard of such problem (though never used the apt-rpm by myself).
Most often the problem was attributed to RH/SUSE love to heavily patched software which leads to requirement to have rpm depend on precise version of the patched software (glibc, perl, python, kernel headers, etc).
Debian's packages normally try to be lax about dependencies: they do not depend on some particular version of other packages, but rather range of versions. e.g. some packaged doesn't depend on "glibc-2.3.99-cvs20041212", but rather on "glibc-2.4 and higher". (I still shiver recalling hell of manually upgrading RH/SUSE servers - after new release of glibc.)
IMHO, your problem is ideological incompatibility of apt and of rpms as provided by vendors.
On Debian with all Debian's repositories + several second party repositories, apt/aptitude does great job of finding compatible combination of packages to install: often it may resort even to downgrading some packages to satisfy dependencies and allow you to install request package.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Informative)
In fact apt can work quite well with rpms (the apt for rpm project springs to mind)
Maybe you are confusing the issue with
Personally I find
However those are personal preference and while not quite as contentious as emacs vs vi I'm sure they won't be solved any time soon.
You are right to bring up apt though - its apt that makes distros like ubuntu and debian shine. Or more importabltly its the repository organisation and discipline that sits behind apt. Without this organisation server side, the package files clearly listing each package which dependancies and conflicts, then the system is all but meaningless, and thats where apt for rpm has fallen down (not that it doesn't work, I've used it with several rpm respositories, its not bad but several times I've had to hand resolve large messy conflicts, I've had to do that on debian true, but only when doing really messy mixtures of sid sarge and woody all on one box during times of serious upheaval - gnome 1.4 to gnome 2 springs to mind)
Getting rpm and apt to run better together is not really about code changes or design changes to either apt or rpm (or the existing apt for rpm software). Its about making good rpm respositories and the package files that go with them - that would be a huge improvement for starters.
The main fustration people feel with rpm is dependancy resolving, being able to type rpm -i gcc-4.1.rpm and having it just work would be nice. People don't associate the same problem with the
I think that is what really colours peoples perceptions. They feel pain frequently when they use rpm (I know I do). They don't feel pain when using
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Informative)
Or do I completely mis-understand how things work under linux ?
-Jar.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately at the moment most packages don't just contain files and meta data they also have this hacky distro-specific bit that actually runs commands directly on the system. Which is really quite crap.
For example a sane package format might have something like this to install a font. This would allow any system that supports truetype fonts to install it how it wants.
But you are more likely to see something like this: Which is actually a set of commands to install the font on a system with a particular X based font system and directory layout.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider: RPM doesn't depend on packages, it depends on files. That is, an RPM file will depend on
Most other systems work more sanely -- a package that needs a web browser can depend on "web browser" or even "Netscape-compatible browser", and those, in turn, could have lists of alternate packages that could fill that role. But even here, you hav
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*Throws down gauntlet*
-Jar.
Re:I've got something to say! (Score:4, Interesting)
How would a universal package for apache, for example, know how to set up starting and stopping the service? Different distributions put the scripts in different places, and use different formats and conventions for the scripts. In future versions of Ubuntu, the scripts won't even be shell scripts, and will be handled in a fundamentally different way. The meaning of installed dependencies is also different. USE flags in Gentoo would have to be considered, for example.
In order to make a package format that would work for everyone, the system would have to resemble autoconf, and check for every imaginable aspect of each system. Like the configure scripts of autoconf, doing so would make installation absurdly slow. The package format would also have to include many versions of files with the same purpose, making the packages very large.
In short, perhaps such a package format could be made, but it would be inferior to the formats that already exist. In fact, this is the case. Formats like autopackage and klik exist, but they are markedly inferior in terms of stability, reliability, elegance, and usefulness for non-trivial packaging requirements, and usually only used for end-user applications with few dependencies.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Funny)
If you install a program and it doesn't run, check the console messages for the missing library (or just ask Google), and install it by hand.
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Re:I've got something to say! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That was no joke. I went from Debian (tried Redhat too) to Slackware because I couldn't stand for dependency hell anymore.
Of course it has a different public. I would recommend Ubuntu for a newbie, but if you have enough experience, Slack's simplicity, elegance, and control are unbeatable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
At least in Debian/Redhat you know there's problem in the moment you try to select/install the package.
In Gentoo, I had to wait three days compiling stuff until it showed up.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it is possible for an emerge to break after you have been compiling for a huge amount of time, but this has nothing to do with a dependency, it has to do with either a the co
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a wrapper for "make install" that creates a package and installs it, so that the software:
1) Gets cataloged on your system's package manager, and
2) Can be easily removed with the normal system package tools.
I made a nice script that guess all the fields of package information, like name and version (from the dir name, or from date, in case of cvs/svn/git), and pass them to checkinstall for a non-interactive one-shot install. If anyone is interested, just ask and
Installing from source on an RPM/DEB system. (Score:3, Informative)
With modern packaging systems, there's occasionally a dependency that is just automatically marked and installed, but mostly it just becomes impossible to install something -- and I fear to install from source as in option 2 above, for I may break the packaging system. A package depends on packages X, Y, and Z, each of which have ten dependencies, and most of which conflict with others, or are reported as "won't be installed" but no reason is given. If I find a way to force it, it doesn't work, or it break
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fortunately, db4 seems to be dead: it's been replaced in such lightweight applications by SQLite, there are a lot more and faster mirrors available, and the repository information is stored more effiently, or at least handles a lot faster with faster modern machines. So it's overall gotten a lot better: take a look at the versions of the pas
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowadays, almost all applications store their dependecy files in their own folders. Yes it leads to bloat, but at least I don't break App1 when I install App2 because of a version conflict in some module. Besides, who's still running Linux on a 4GB drive and installing multiple applications these days?
There are reasons other than bloat for separating out dependencies. For instance, say a vulnerability was reported in zlib. If every application had their own implementation of zlib, then one would have to replace zlib for every application. A shared library doesn't have this problem; it can be upgraded without problems so long as it remains backward compatible. Compartmentalising functionality is common practise in the open source world.
However, there are various file distribution systems available for
Re:fuck dependency hell (Score:4, Funny)
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