On Monday 18 November 2002 12:15, Thibaut Cousin wrote:
Second, SuSE is not the first distro to use Apt. The port from Debian to RPM was made by Conectiva Linux, which includes Apt as its default package manager (and it is not recent).
Yes. But I did say "first mainstream" specifically because SuSE would not be the first to try to move APT into the light. Certainly, all the hard work would already be done at this point. As you specify, Conectiva ported apt to rpm and made it an integral part of their distro, but I do not consider them a "mainstream" distrubtion. Thanks for clearing that up though.
Third, your point 2 is not really a good one. If you want a production machine, always stable and no fancy, having access to the latest-and-bleeding-edge software is more a source of problems than an asset. At home I play around with softwares a lot, but at work I'm sticking with Yast2 because I want certified things (and I've never, ever had any real problem with it).
I'm not advocating the end of YaST2. I am advocating the end of the YaST2 Online Update as an application [quote: "1. removal of the YaST Online Update"]. YaST2 in general is awesome and is a major marketing tool for SuSE because of its integration of network, hardware, and software components into one nice, neat configuration tool. I, personally, am especially impressed with SuSE 8.1's YPM (Package Manager) and YaST2's hardware detection. But, I don't particularly like Online Update. The service is awesome, and you are not forced to use YOU either. You can use Fou4s, for example. But I, along with several others were on SLE, have had problems with YOU.
Apt can be a great tool but you can also destroy your system with it. I don't know how Conectiva uses it, but it is not so easy to integrate it in a distribution and expect industrial-quality.'
Of course SuSE won't include all the different APT repositories in the config; just theirs. Anyone who wants to use another one (along with SuSE's) can simply add the line. It would be foolish to include anything other than their own repository in the default install. A tech support nightmare. I'm also not saying that SuSE should use apt4rpm in the next release. As with anything, a slow gradual process is necessary; first internally, then actually included in the distro. But, as you said, all the bugs have to be worked out beforehand...
I read recently on this list that RPM had all the features you can find in the Debian format. If so, great, then Apt will be able to be a good tool in SuSE. But I'm still waiting to see these features in any RPM-based distribution... And without them, Apt is dangerous.
If enough customers request something, the company will be sure to cater
to them. After all, SuSE funded reiserfs, LVM, among others. That's
what my original post was: a request. With some time, apt for RPM will
be just as good as apt for DEB. I'm just voicing my opinion, which is
that this (i.e., apt for rpm) is a goal worth pursuing.
--
Karol Pietrzak