On Saturday 17 February 2007, Steve Siegfried wrote: > In part, Sam Varshavchik wrote: > > rpm really needs to go. > > To be replaced by what? > > Sure, rpmbuild & rpm are the Swiss Army knives of software > packagers and package-loaders. They can be difficult to use and > aren't documented in the man pages very well. But writing as > someone who once implemented a software packaging/install scheme in > the pre-rpm days to build, package, distribute, install and upgrade > a proprietary version of Unix, it's an exceptionally difficult > problem to solve and rpm has mostly solved it. > > Generally, when users have trouble with an %post failing, it's the > fault of the people who created the rpm package, not rpm's fault. > This is what bugzilla's for, but for a number of diverse reasons, > few Linux users bother reporting install and upgrade problems. And > if the creators of a package don't know it's busted in certain > situations, how can they fix it? > > It might be nice if "rpm --test" did what it promised, but as I > recall, it doesn't fake running %post scriptlets. There's a good > reason for that. It's yet another exceptionally hard problem to > solve correctly for all the circumstances under which it's likely > to be used. Think for a second about how hard it is to fake (with > --test) removing a file with "rm" and then 50 lines later testing > for the file's existence as a trigger for doing a bunch of other > stuff, including creating some files. Then generalize that for > touch, cp, ln, et cetera. It gets kinda hairy when you finally > work your way up to faking cc and ld. And for what? All to avoid a > few "no such file or directory"/"unable to remove" type errors when > you run rpm in anger... err, without "--test". Like they used to > say in WWII when fuel was being rationed: "Is this trip necessary?" > Nope. > > In the end, the only person responsible for what's on your machine > is the person with the root password. For desktop and notebook > PCs, that's usually the person at the keyboard. If you ignore > warnings in the install and upgrade logs, be prepared to have dusty > files laying around. And, because of PATH issues, some of these > dusty files will be used instead of the freshest stuff. > > But then Unix in general and Linux in particular have always been > caveat emptor and RTFM kinds of operating systems. If you sign up, > you sign up for the whole deal. And if you didn't sign up for > that, well... buy a Mac. > > -S I can't argue with your point about reporting to bugzilla so now that I've been called to my duty I'll go do that. I really don't feel that I've been unfairly zapped by the problem I've described. I don't do this for a living and I'm a volunteer user of FC with plenty of time on my hands so I'll take what comes as part of the game. But, "buy a MAC"? Not in this lifetime... Karl L
