I was wondering why fedora has choosen yum over apt-get

Shahms King shahms at shahms.com
Tue Feb 10 19:05:24 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 10:38, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 10:29 -0800, Shahms King wrote:
> > I cannot speak for Fedora, but I can say that from my experiences using
> > both apt-rpm and yum I have found yum to be much more "reasonable".  I
> > suspect that the reason for this is that yum is more forgiving of minor
> > inconsistencies than is apt, which may be good or bad, depending on your
> > position.  Yum, unlike apt, will proceed with an upgrade or install even
> > if a completely unrelated package is slightly out-of-whack.
> 
> So it is better to have a potentially unstable system?

No, however, when I know the correct solution to a problem that apt is
convinced will lead to an "unstable system" and therefore refuses to
perform said operation, it is no longer a useful tool.  Or, at the very
least, its utility is vastly reduced.  Additionally, if I am willing to
live with a potentially unstable system, apt should not get in my way.

> > For example, I ran into problems relating to the gnome-libs package a
> > while back.  Apt was completely unable to resolve the issues (mostly
> > because of weird dependency issues).
> 
> Or packages without enough Q/A? Evidently their dependencies were not
> properly declared.

Or Obsoletes or Epoch or . . .  Any number of issues that have no impact
on the software itself.  If I am aware of these issues, I can work
around them until they are properly Q/A'd as long as I'm not using apt.
Additionally, apt has had problems with packages that were completely
correct, simply replacing other packages that have different
dependencies. Say, replacing ximian packages with the official Fedora
ones.  Ximian had a newer version of gnome-libs than Fedora Core,
however, that version was not the one required by the FC packages. 
Rather than downgrading that one package, apt decided the only way to
resolve the issue was to uninstall all of GNOME (even the GNOME2
packages which didn't require gnome-libs at all).  If you think that is
the "correct" solution, then continue using apt.  I, however, will:

rpm -e --nodeps gnome-libs
yum install gnome-libs
yum update

and continue on my merry way.


> > database is not in a consistent state).  You can argue that apt's
> > behavior is correct, but that correctness makes it completely useless in
> > many real-world situations.
> 
> Unmanageable systems too. The problem is with the packages (and they
> should be fixed) not with apt.

The primary problem is with the packages, however, apt's inability to
"do-what-I-say-and-damn-the-torpedoes" is a problem with apt, not a
specific package.

> > Many packaging problems require "creative" (albeit temporary) solutions
> > until the upstream packages are fixed.
> 
> Install src.rpm, correct the spec. It's usually very easy.

*sigh* Yeah, you try that when one GNOME package is very slightly
mispackaged in such as way as to require recompiling all of GNOME.  Or
XFree86.  Or OpenOffice.org.  Seriously, I have better things to do with
my time than recompile a package with a one-line change to the specfile
that has no impact on the software itself.

> >   My tools should not get in my
> > way.  This is UNIX, my tools are supposed to do what I say, even if they
> > think I'm off my rocker.  There's a reason RPM lets you do stupid things
> > like "--force" and "--nodeps".  I have many more examples of apt getting
> > in my way where yum (by not trying to be as smart) worked.  Yum never
> > asks me to remove packages when I say "install" or "update".
> 
> Yet you recur to "creative" solutions?

I don't even know what you're trying to say here... Removing packages
when asked to update a completely unrelated package (in the absence of
"Obsoletes" is complete counter-intuitive and just asking for trouble,
especially when the default is 'Y' unlike yum).

> Rui
-- 
Shahms King <shahms at shahms.com>





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