Smartrpm was (Re: Fedora Core 4)

Andreas Hasenack andreas at conectiva.com.br
Thu Jan 20 19:52:24 UTC 2005


On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 02:46:36PM -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:06:52 -0200, Andreas Hasenack <andreas at conectiva.com.br> 
> > They are less in size than what yum downloads, because the pkglist file
> > used by apt doesn't have to list all files inside packages. 
> 
> You are talking about apt for rpm here or are you basing this on
> experience of using apt with debian packages?  My understanding is

apt-rpm, I don't know about apt for debian.

> .deb packages don't have a native understanding of 'file dependancies'
> where as .rpm packages do.  My understanding is dated to mid 2003

Correct, rpm has file dependencies and many of them are automatic ones
(library sonames, for example)

> which was the last time i read up on the differences between the .deb
> and .rpm packaging formats... so I might have an  out of date
> understanding,
>  
> Once you have explicit file dependancies like "Requires
> /sbin/ldconfig" in packages you have to make some effort to grab the
> file lists to be able to resolve that sort of requirement.  How else
> do you resolve file dependancies, if you don't have the per-package
> file lists?

apt-rpm has a smaller file list. It doesn't include all package files, just
some like those in *bin* directories and libraries and some others which
I don't recall now.

> And I'm pretty sure the metadata structures yum is using now 2.1.x
> don't download all the filelists unless an exotic file dependancy has
> to be met. I'm pretty sure that commonly used filelist information
> (things like (/usr)/(s)bin/* , /etc/* and /var/lib/*) is stored in the
> primary.xml  metadata file.. while the full file lists (things like
> /usr/share/docs/*) are kept in filelists.xml.

I was under the impression that the *rpm headers* yum downloaded would
contain all files inside the package. This is a somewhat two step update,
right? First it downloads this xml file and then the rpm headers. At
least seemed that way when I fired it up here with FC3. If not, then I
don't know what that 600kb "header" download from tetex contained.




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