On 5/16/06, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

There is no upcomming tool. Linux is about choice. Preconfigured Packagemanager will "always" be YaST/libzypp.

Because the "community" chose it after looking at all the available options. :p I started http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Management

maybe you can help and expand it with examples for apt4rpm?

I'll see if I can help with this tonight, but I believe apt4rpm=smart as the developer(s) of the first have moved on to the second. Sander

Just wondering if this issue was ever resolved. In kde with compiz as wm, whenever an application has to flash in the taskbar , i.e. a Kopete window when I have a message... once I have clicked on it, the flash remains there, the window is still highlighted, implying that it's urgent. It doesn't go away until compiz is restarted, or kwin is started. Any ideas? :) Kind thoughts, Francis Giannaros (apokryphos).

Richard Bos schrieb:

Op dinsdag 16 mei 2006 17:50, schreef Alexander Antoniades:

...

I'll see if I can help with this tonight, but I believe apt4rpm=smart as the developer(s) of the first have moved on to the second.

This is not correct. apt and smart are 2 complete different beasts. The apt-rpm developers indeed moved to smart, but in the meantime other people have taken over apt-rpm development. This resulted in the addition of repodata [1] support.

[1] Same format as yast/you repository

Interesting. As the apt4rpm mailing list is dead since months, I also believed the project is not active anymore. As you're one of the persons with most insight, what would you recommend for 10.1? Smart or apt4rpm? Can you maybe shed some lights on the differences or give a pointer to a doc, where they are compared? Ciao Siegbert

The defence is that "linux is about choices." And yes, it is. But those that are creating a distribution, have to make the choices. They choose some mechanism for the distribution - and about 99% of users use that! Yes,there are many people that know other mechanisms could be used - but many dare not even try. Why? Because nobody knows if it will break the distribution or not. (Yes, I'm one of these...) It is totally unclear what happens if one uses apt-get to update SUSE. Does the YaST package management work correctly after that? Do the security updates work anymore? We have use SUSE Linux at work. After reading about the package management problems of 10.1, we desided not to upgrade to 10.1. Somebody wrote that the good releases were 9.1, 9.3 and 10.1 - I'd say they are 9.1, 9.3 and 10.0. HG On 5/16/06, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Hi,

On Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 07:05:33, Kyek, Andreas, VF-DE wrote:

...

I'm a bit confused about the packagemanagement in 10.1.

AFAIK there is yast, smart and apt. smart shall be the successor of apt, which will (AFAIK) be supported last time with 10.1

and yum and y2pmsh and rug/zmd...

...

What about smart? Is smart the upcoming tool in 10.x or is it yast (with this migrated software for software management where I read something somewhere about?)

There is no upcomming tool. Linux is about choice. Preconfigured Packagemanager will "always" be YaST/libzypp.

...

Can someone clarify that or tell me a link, where I can read something about that?

I started http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Management

maybe you can help and expand it with examples for apt4rpm?

Henne

-- Henne Vogelsang, Core Services "Rules change. The Game remains the same." - Omar (The Wire)

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-- HG.

Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 19:44, schreef Martin Schlander:

Unless I'm mistaken Apt is not included on 10.1 - but Smart is - or Yum.

Apt is part of the 10.1 It does not come on the CD's but it is downloadable from the servers (it's part of the suse part that is only available via ftp). -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 08:00:17AM -0700, HG wrote:

About this list being about the community... I did not ask help in regards of the package management (though I need it). I was pointing out that the OpenSUSE community can not hide behind "linux is about choices" mantra. SUSE needs to clear out the package management mess. And the way to do that is pick one - and make it work - and make that the default that is in YaST.

1) Please do not toppost 2) People are working on a solution -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HG wrote:

On 5/26/06, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

fredag 26 maj 2006 11:28 skrev HG:

...

Yes,there are many people that know other mechanisms could be used - but many dare not even try. Why? Because nobody knows if it will break the distribution or not. (Yes, I'm one of these...) It is totally unclear what happens if one uses apt-get to update SUSE. Does the YaST package management work correctly after that? Do the security updates work anymore?

...

Unless I'm mistaken Apt is not included on 10.1 - but Smart is - or Yum. You can use these other rpm-frontends - and it won't cause problems with yast/zen/rug. Of course if you install unsupported packages with Smart it will affect security updates - but that's it. Now that the security updates are fed via a normal repo you can also install the official security updates with Smart for example. And please keep in mind this list is for community discussions. Technical questions about released versions belong on suse-linux-e@suse.com

About this list being about the community... I did not ask help in regards of the package management (though I need it). I was pointing out that the OpenSUSE community can not hide behind "linux is about choices" mantra. SUSE needs to clear out the package management mess. And the way to do that is pick one - and make it work - and make that the default that is in YaST.

(no top-postings please) Just to make a few things clear: 1) No one is "hiding" behind "Linux is about choices", I wonder what in Martin's reply makes you feel like we would. 2) The problems with the YaST2/zypp/ZMD package management in 10.1 is now very clear to everyone and it's being worked on, actively. Note that we are fully aware of those issues, it's a very uncomfortable situation to say the least, but we've been able to get a few things rolling and, as said, it's being tackled by the SUSE team and we, community, help as much as we can with testing, filing bug reports, giving feedback, etc... Hopefully it will be solved soon, but it will take some development work. 3) Until the major issues are solved, there are a few alternatives to YaST2/zypp/ZMD you can use on SUSE Linux 10.1 (and older versions). If you want something that works well, now, use those. Martin gave a few of the options. Let me summarize again (and note that all of those are included with SL 10.1, either on the media or on the FTP tree): - - yum: I wouldn't recommend using yum, it's not the most stable and (dare I say) apt package manager at the moment (I really wonder how the Fedora users can live with it) - - apt-rpm: while some people report bad experiences with it (corrupt RPM database), I personally never had issues with it (but I've been using smart since some time now) and it seems that it's being actively maintained and developed again, and even supports RPM-MD (yum) repositories in its latest versions (though that's not the one shipped on the 10.1 FTP tree) - - y2pmsh: that tool is developed by the SUSE team and has been shipped with SUSE Linux since 9.1: it's a CLI/shell front-end to the YaST2 Package Management engine. The interesting thing here, is that it has not been ported to zypp/ZMD, which means that it is still using the "old" YaST2 package management engine, and it works well. - - smart: last but not least, what seems to be the current "rising star" of package management. It's a 99% Python application (99% because it depends on rpm-python) that has a CLI, shell and GUI frontend (similar to aptitude) that most certainly has the best resolver engine and is particularly smart (eh) at solving upgrades, dependencies, downgrades, etc... Personally, I would recommend smart, as it is being used by a lot of SUSE users now, who are very happy with it. For more information about smart: http://smartpm.org/ http://spinink.net/2006/05/20/installing-smart-package-manager/ And you might consider using my smart RPMs that come preinstalled with all the channels and mirrors you'd need: http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/rpm-navigation.php?cat=System/smart/ So, to summarize, I'd say go with smart or y2pmsh (though I personally have nothing against apt-rpm - Richard is a big fan of it, maybe you'd like to make a case for it ;)). Now, all of those are actually package management "frontends", because they all rely on rpm or librpm to do the real low-level work, none of them is bypassing it. That means you can use any of them or even "mix" them (install something with y2pmsh, then upgrade it with smart, etc...). All of that being said, the community and the SUSE team is not "hiding" behind those alternatives. The problems with YaST2/zypp/ZMD in 10.1 have been identified, been made clear to everyone and we're working on it. Of course, SUSE Linux must have a default package manager (YaST2) that works flawlessly. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEeHJRr3NMWliFcXcRAod4AKCtgyryGIwVV9OJUDWDvWC9clchlACeMnAd Opp7h5u1qm17eAdG4c0OrM8= =xfDC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Druid schrieb:

...

3) Until the major issues are solved, there are a few alternatives to YaST2/zypp/ZMD you can use on SUSE Linux 10.1 (and older versions). If you want something that works well, now, use those. Martin gave a few of the options. Let me summarize again (and note that all of those are included with SL 10.1, either on the media or on the FTP tree):

Its more or less sumarized here http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Management

Maybe I missed a point till now, but can any of these package managers store the downloaded packages locally? E.g. Yast Online Update was able to do this till SUSE 10.0 and it was easy to create a personalized patch CD. It would save bandwidth an time (and lots of my nerves) if it was possible to store the packages and repository data on my HD. Can anybody give me a hint if it is possible? Kind regards

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Pascal Bleser wrote:

Thomas Meindl wrote:

...

...

Druid schrieb: ... Maybe I missed a point till now, but can any of these package managers store the downloaded packages locally? E.g. Yast Online Update was able to do this till SUSE 10.0 and it was easy to create a personalized patch CD. It would save bandwidth an time (and lots of my nerves) if it was possible to store the packages and repository data on my HD. Can anybody give me a hint if it is possible?

smart config set remove-packages=False

or

smart -oremove-packages=False install ...

Sorry, it's smart -o remove-packages=false install/upgrade ... See the FAQ: http://labix.org/smart/faq#head-a58d1f3021d9c21845a7b23b4b5e6a514060f64d cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEeInIr3NMWliFcXcRAq/zAKCu165fPTniUWmZ5GYCO+e7iIfUtgCdE3ui fAlTmdPn9/LspJIMoEs7NaI= =r/FI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 19:07, schreef houghi:

E.g. Yast Online Update was able

...

to do this till SUSE 10.0 and it was easy to create a personalized patch CD. It would save bandwidth an time (and lots of my nerves) if it was possible to store the packages and repository data on my HD.  Can anybody give me a hint if it is possible?

This would also be nice not only for updates, but RPM's in general. e.g. I can download MPlayer and all that is needed into /usr/src/packages/RPMS/* and can use that as a base for other machines (or whatever)

I guess all pkg mgr will store their downloaded rpms. APT does this in /var/cache/apt/archives, yast and samrt will do this somewhere else. Those archives can be used for other machines as well. In my case /var/cache/apt/archives is nfs mounted to different machines and as such the cache is shared among different machine automatically. It would be nice if all pkg managers would use the same cache. -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 18:58, schreef Thomas Meindl:

Maybe I missed a point till now, but can any of these package managers store the downloaded packages locally?

apt can do this ;) E.g. you build your own package that is of course stored locally. Install the package with 'apt install <rpm name>'. Apt will install the app and when it requires other pkgs they'll be retrieved from the repository. Another nice is to install based on file name, like: apt install /usr/bin/smart apt will investigate which package provides /usr/bin/smart and will install that one :0 -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

Hi,

Maybe I missed a point till now, but can any of these package managers store the downloaded packages locally?

You can use smart to get this effect.

E.g. Yast Online Update was able to do this till SUSE 10.0 and it was easy to create a personalized patch CD. It would save bandwidth an time (and lots of my nerves) if it was possible to store the packages and repository data on my HD.

YOU in SL 10.1 has the same option in the UI, too (there is a checkbox "remove patches" which is unchecked by default), but it's a stub (i.e., it is not effective). A bug IMHO (the option should not be shown if it's not effective), no idea if that's already known. It is, most probably.

Can anybody give me a hint if it is possible?

You can use smart, but it does not save packages by default. You have to enable it explicitly: smart config --set remove-packages=false More info: http://labix.org/smart/faq http://labix.org/smart/config-options Please note that this will cause smart to store all packages locally, even those that you might already have on your physical media. Andreas Hanke -- Bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten sparen: GMX SmartSurfer! Kostenlos downloaden: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

Hi, On Sat, 27 May 2006 andreas.hanke@gmx-topmail.de wrote:

...

- apt-rpm: while some people report bad experiences with it (corrupt RPM database), I personally never had issues with it (but I've been using smart since some time now) and it seems that it's being actively maintained and developed again, and even supports RPM-MD (yum) repositories in its latest versions (though that's not the one shipped on the 10.1 FTP tree)

OK, but then it should be made very clear that this one (apt) is not the one whose resolver engine was designed to work with the repositories provided for SUSE Linux. Especially, it should be made very clear that it is not biarch safe, which YaST/zypp is (or at least, should be).

There is a bug 176739 and I blame using non-YaST/zypp package managers for it.

You better should blame the non-matching package release numbers for glibc-devel (i686 has a higher number).

Some examples of people experiencing this problem (two of them in German, unfortunately):

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=37096 http://www.linux-club.de/ftopic60412.html http://www.linux-club.de/ftopic61119.html

This is not "some examples" - this is all you have. Your mouth is bigger than your head. Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 andreas.hanke@gmx-topmail.de wrote:

Hi,

...

- apt-rpm: while some people report bad experiences with it (corrupt RPM database), I personally never had issues with it (but I've been using smart since some time now) and it seems that it's being actively maintained and developed again, and even supports RPM-MD (yum) repositories in its latest versions (though that's not the one shipped on the 10.1 FTP tree)

OK, but then it should be made very clear that this one (apt) is not the one whose resolver engine was designed to work with the repositories provided for SUSE Linux. Especially, it should be made very clear that it is not biarch safe, which YaST/zypp is (or at least, should be).

Yes, apt-rpm not supporting biarch is an issue, forgot about that one. smart is fully biarch-capable, and so is yum AFAIK. What do you mean with "is not the one whose resolver engine was designed to work with the repositories provided for SUSE Linux" ? That there are no apt-rpm repositories for SUSE Linux, except those built my Eberhard on gwdg.de ?

There is a bug 176739 and I blame using non-YaST/zypp package managers for it.

That's nonsense, at least with a non-zypp package manager that supports biarch, like smart. Smart is lightyears ahead of zypp/rug/whatever as far as its resolver engine is concerned.

Some examples of people experiencing this problem (two of them in German, unfortunately):

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=37096 http://www.linux-club.de/ftopic60412.html http://www.linux-club.de/ftopic61119.html

IMHO improving YaST/zypp should be the priority now, not migrating people away from it to alternative package managers (which have different problems that will most probably not be fixed with the same priority by SUSE engineers).

Sure, but... that's ridiculous: zypp *does not work properly*. So alternatives are needed, now, until zypp is fixed. The zypp issues are causing havoc amongst the SUSE Linux userbase at the moment, so we better be happy that there are properly working alternatives, or the situation would be even worse. It's not "migrating people away", it's giving people a package management frontend that actually works. Of course, no piece of software is perfect, and even smart has some issues, but from the feedback I get and see, everyone is really happy with it. Smart's bugs and shortcomings are being fixed as well, of course not by the SUSE engineers (although cthiel submitted an enhancement to smart a few months ago ;D), but by the smart project maintainers. So, what's best ? zypp that works 20%, or smart that works 99% ? That being said, again, as I wrote very clearly in my previous mail, improving zypp is the top priority now, I think everyone totally agrees on this. cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEeIgNr3NMWliFcXcRAt2BAJ9vHdlOfuVn9xTLGOCZ3Srw3SGXBwCfZYu9 W/l0xZYq2Q78rRsD3PLHauo= =2n0o -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 17:37, schreef Pascal Bleser:

apt-rpm - Richard is a big fan of it, maybe you'd like to make a case for it ;)).

:) Pascal, what do you mean with "you'd like to make a case for it"? What case? Do you refer to me or to the some of the previous posters? -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 19:10, schreef houghi:

Naturaly he was talking to/about you. Who else would make a case for apt

What case? People that know apt use it happily. People that don't know apt are advised by suse (and it's community) to use smart for the moment. When zypp/rug or working normally people will use that. That's fine with me (case closed). I think that apt should just be part of the suse distribution, like it is in 10.1 (not on CD, but on the ftp server). This is the best case. Case closed ;) -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

On Saturday 27 May 2006 18:25, Richard Bos wrote:

Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 19:10, schreef houghi:

...

Naturaly he was talking to/about you. Who else would make a case for apt

What case? People that know apt use it happily. People that don't know apt are advised by suse (and it's community) to use smart for the moment. When zypp/rug or working normally people will use that. That's fine with me (case closed). I think that apt should just be part of the suse distribution, like it is in 10.1 (not on CD, but on the ftp server). This is the best case. Case closed ;)

I'm not convinced that that's just the case. I'd quite happily say that I'm a pretty experienced APT user, but these days I only use smart; there's more to the smart/apt distinction. Some have already raised the quick pros/cons of the different package management systems, but perhaps a few more words could be said. Apt on suse is not nearly as pacey as it is on debian/ubuntu. I have no idea as to the root of the actual problem of this issue -- whether it's extra configurations that optimise perfomance on debian/ubuntu, or an issue with apt-rpm itself -- but it's certainly an issue, and it is kind of obvious. Needless to say, this issue does not bother me at all, and certainly wouldn't stop me using it on suse. Apt is not BiArch, and it's for this particular reason that Shuttleworth has mentioned its possible inclusion in Ubuntu 6.10 (as it's set to be). This is definitely an issue for me, an AMD64 user, on SUSE. Smart has a lot more nice things that apt simply lacks. It can use Yast repositories, it can use Yum repositories, and very nicely for me -- it can make multiple connections at once and can appropriately handle mirror-sources/repositories. This is something that Apt can't really do. This is hugely useful as download speeds are dramatically increased. Though, I also like smart's --shell interface. Don't get me wrong, APT has a few advantages too, I've used apt quite a bit and have come to know and got too used to its strengths. For me the only thing I really miss now though is build-dep, which is incredibly useful for those who venture into compiling. Smart has nothing like this, and really I doubt there are current plans to introduce this. As to using APT on suse, I see people every other day saying "don't use apt, it'll muck up your system". I used it quite a bit, and I only ever recall having to do rpm --rebuilddb once while using apt, and to be frank I'm not convinced that apt was to blame for the error. So I'm not really put off using it. I think smart can still improve (and indeed it looks incredibly promising), and apt isn't a bad tool at all -- I could still use it all the time if I *had* to, but as SUSE is now, I'd really rather use smart and recommend others to, too. Regards, Francis Giannaros.

HG wrote:

...

2) The problems with the YaST2/zypp/ZMD package management in 10.1 is now very clear to everyone and it's being worked on, actively.

I know that (now). Except, that I'm not at all convinced that the problems are very clear to _everyone_.

what is clear is that there is a problem :-) the problem itself is not so well understood, I guess there are several bugs mixed in an obscure manner. the result is things getting slow. but the results are improving :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos