Re: LPI and Distros...

["Brandon Joseph Adams" <bja@illinois.dyndns.org>]

> On Sun, Jul 18, 2004 at 06:21:05PM -0000, Brandon Joseph Adams wrote:
>> As a slackware user I have to respond. There is standard package
>> management. It is very simple, in the pkgtools with no dependency
>> checking.
>
> That's not package management, that's tar.
>
> "Package management" implies dependency checking, conflict checking, a
> way of upgrading/removing/downgrading packages *cleanly*, etc.  rpm
> has all of that.  dpkg has all of that.  Even HP-UX's swinstall has
> all that.  Slackware's tools have almost none of that.

Slackware does deinstall packages cleanly. I also referred to pkgsrc,
which will use different utilities (similiarly named) to do the same thing
as rpm and dpkg. I really recommend running pkgsrc (www.pkgsrc.org) if you
are running Slackware (or any other linux that doesn't have a usable
packaging system by default).

>
>> If you don't like the spartan package management, build your own from
>> tarballs. There is no difference in customizing something for slackware
>> using ./configure than editing an rpm.spec for Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/etc
>> except that ./configure is not rpm-specific.
>
> Which is exactly what Slackware users do (and have always done)
>
> Keep in mind, I was a Slackware user for several years, a decade ago.
> *Nothing* has changed in Slackware, even though the rest of the world
> has.
>
>> The QA is up to the administrator and the package designer. If you would
>> use known good packages (e.g. don't use a random gcc build to bring up
>> your system), you don't have quite as many problems. Interactions still
>> need to be understood. That's one of the reasons the admin is paid.
>
> An admin is also paid to make good decisions.  In my mind, an admin
> should know better than to waste time building things from source,
> testing, etc., when there are other people volunteering or getting
> paid to do that job.  :-)
>
>> I'm not seeing how userbase matters. For example, because Steve's rpms
>> don't have a lot of users, does this mean they are bad? Of course not. I
>> use them, along with a lot of other people on this list.
>
> First of all, most of my stuff has actually been tested more than you
> might realize...  Most of the stuff I build is for various clients.
> Also, nearly all of the stuff I make available has been submitted to
> fedora.us for QA approval, so I like to think my packages are pretty
> good.

Your packages are pretty good. When I use redhat systems, I use your
packages. Still, Slackware receives a lot of QA from its users, several
thousand of them. Linuxpackages.net is a desktop-oriented site, and it has
11 thousand slackware users registered.

The pkgsrc system I recommended is used on a variety of systems from
HP-UX, Solaris, NetBSD (where it is native), to FreeBSD, Linux, and now
Cygwin (although that is more of a proof of concept thing). There are
binary packages available for most of the platforms, the the build scripts
(makefiles) are system-independent and are heavily tested. You'd still be
using the native Slackware compiler toolchain, and that is also very well
tested.

In addition, pkgsrc makes managing multiple systems with nonstandard
builds at least as easy as apt. You run "make package", and set up your
ftp/rsync/http server to be rooted in the packages directory, and then all
you need on the actual servers are the pkgsrc pkg_* utilities.

"pkg_add -r http://192.168.1.4/slackware/apache.tbz"

I like apt, but I use pkgsrc because it is cross-platform. I maintain more
than just one linux and I don't like maintaing rpms, debs, and such for
each system.

>> Slackware has their own, much simpler init system. The init system is
>> mainly a thing of preference.
>
> BSD-style init is an unmaintainable mess.  It's not simpler by *any*
> stretch of the imagination.  It's actually *ridiculously* complicated
> compared to SysV init, which simply uses a bunch of symbolic links to
> determine what gets started/stopped at any given runlevel.

I fail to see the complication. SysV scripts are actually supported by
slackware by the rc.sysvinit script which searches for SysV init scripts
and uses them.

>
> This is one place where I will give Gentoo some points...  Their init
> system isn't standard, but it is interesting.  It has dependency
> checking, so that if (for example) the portmap service has to start
> before the nfs service, then the nfs service can just say that portmap
> is a dependency, and it will automatically be started in the right
> order.

The Gentoo system is nice. It's very similiar to the way FreeBSD and
NetBSD now do it, with rcng.


Brandon Joseph Adams
bja@illinois.dyndns.org


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