Debian (was Re: [Sheflug] Re: Problem )

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris J/#6 <sixie [at] nccnet.co.uk> writes:

    Chris> [[ Warning! Possible irrational griping below!! ]]

Not irrational, just a little underinformed.

    Chris> Well Debian's package management requires jumping through
    Chris> more hoops than RPM's, to a point.

Not required by the PMS (dpkg) as such, but by apt.  If RPM did as
much for you as apt does, it would be similarly annoying I imagine.

    Chris> The problem is apt-get has an overly-loyal and totally
    Chris> unbending love of dependcancies. Which is a problem for
    Chris> someone like me who does a lot of source compilation and
    Chris> rarely uses package management.

apt-get source -b $PACKAGE && dpkg -i $PACKAGE*.deb

It's also reasonably easy to fool the package system.  You just create
fake debian/{changelog,control} files (and maybe some other stuff) and
use dpkg-deb to build a package out of them.  Wouldn't be hard to
write a script to take a package name and version number and create a
fake package that provides the features.  I only do this for XEmacs,
though (and maybe Ghostscript starting in a few days).

But as long as you're using vanilla sources (you wouldn't edit any of
DJB's code, would ya?) apt-get source wins.

    Chris> dpkg the file manually, as dpkg *can* be told to ignore
    Chris> dependancies.

Except that this will probably get apt upset later.

    Chris> If I wasn't a source monster, apt-get/dpkg seems like mana
    Chris> from heaven compared to RPMs.

I guess it comes down to how often you actually change the sources in
ways that would upset "debian/rules binary".  I forget how hard it is
to change configuration, I think you just edit the ./configure call in
debian/rules, and unless there's soem kind of self-test, or the file
set produced changes, you should get away with it.

    Chris> Debian uses both rcX.d and rcS.d (ie the single-user level
    Chris> directory) to bring a machine up.

I actually like this.

    Chris> Coming from a trad. unix background, I find this rather
    Chris> nasty - single user *should* start only *minimal* services
    Chris> - ie, a getty and whatever system services are needed for a
    Chris> user to actually make use of the system, and also only the
    Chris> root FS should be mounted.

But I agree with you here.

    Chris> Slackware does what its told and doesn't give nasty
    Chris> suprises like this, which is why it's going back on this
    Chris> machine, probably this weekend.

Debian, unfortunately, has come a long way from its "developer's
distro" roots (or maybe the basic concept of "developer" has
changed).

Do what's best, but I did want to explain that there are some options
that might make things a little happier for you.


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