portage vs yum

[Michael Fleming]

On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 06:14 +0000, Thufir wrote:
> the pro's for three distros:
> 
> gentoo:
> portage is bigger than yum and just as easy to use
> live cd
> 
> sabayon:
> binary builds of portage (for a fee, IIRC)
> anaconda
> 
> fedora:
> live cd
> anaconda
> 
> The drawback to fedora is, to my mind, rpm and yum.  portage is 
> superior.  

In what way is portage (which is essentially the "ports" methods from
*BSD et. al) superior to yum / RPM? (Or, how is the latter inferior in
your view, aside from "it doesn't have all the packages I want/need")

> it's also capable, as sabayon has demonstrated, of 
> distributing binaries.
> 
> Please switch to something like portage, which builds from source.

RPM has to get it's sources from somewhere. :-)

Ports / portage pulls the sources from the upstream site at build time,
if I recall rightly. What happens if/when - and this has happened in the
past IIRC - the upstream site tarballs are compromised? What's it's
dependency handling like?

>   This 
> would eliminate, or at least, significantly reduce, the need for me to do 
> things like build lshw from source because, and correct me if I'm wrong, 
> it'd be easier to leave "in" and would require less maintenance.

With portage, you'd still need to either build from ports or pull in the
binary packages so I'm not seeing a distinct advantage in your proposal.

> Assuming all other things to be equal, as in only GPL 2 stuff is 
> maintained, isn't portage easier to maintain?  Wouldn't that mean more 
> stuff for me (I mean users)?

Someone still has to maintain the port, and that would consume the same
amount of time and effort as maintaining an RPM as far as I can see it.
No win there..

I think what you really want is an RPM for lshw - remembering that this
is a community effort, you're quite welcome to have a go yourself (and
there are plenty of people on this list who are more than capable in
assisting in such an endeavour) or perhaps find an experienced packager
that's also interested in maintaining such a package.

Changing package managers strikes me as an exercise in wheel
reinvention :-)

> Thank you,
> 
> Thufir
> 

Michael.

-- 
Michael Fleming <mfleming at enlartenment.com> in Brisbane, Australia
"Be master of your mind, not mastered by mind"