David (and all), Thanks for the reply. The part about mixing hand built stuff with pacages in concerning as I do this quite often. The number of available packages is encouraging but, nonetheless, I know occasions will arise. I've had to build/install by hand X, glibc, postgres, the kernel, gcc, freeamp, and others because of needing bleeding edge versions that fix bugs or because, in debugging the current version, I needed a non-stripped binary. Although the automatic installation abilities of apt sound nice, I find that I usually want to actually download the, in my case, RPM so that I can use it on multiple machines. That is, I question the benefit of this for me.
Anyway, I wall continue to explore this and, once again, thanks for the info. --Rainer > -----Original Message----- > From: David B. Harris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 5:27 PM > To: Rainer Mager > Cc: debian-user@lists.debian.org > Subject: Re: Considering Debian > > > To quote "Rainer Mager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > # So, to make a long story short, how is the Debian package manager in > this > # regards? Do the same problems exist? > > Well, understand that there are two parts to the Debian packaging > system. 'apt', and 'dpkg'. 'dpkg' is roughly equivalent to function, if > not in features. 'apt' is a suite of utilities, and is generally what a > user would use. Debian has what are called repositories; there are local > mirrors in pretty much every country(I think ;). You can 'apt-get > install <package>', and it will resolve dependancies for you. It'll > install everything <package> needs, within limits. Sometimes two > packages conflict, and sometimes you'll need to manually over-ride it(so > that the other package gets removed). Anyways, it's pretty slick, > compared to 'rpm' :) > > # How easy is it to mix package installed > # pieces to pieces installed by hand? > > It's bad. Very bad. :) To make a long story short, just don't. If you > *must* install something manually, pass "--prefix=/opt > --sysconfdir=/opt/etc" or something to ./configure, to keep your own > compiled apps seperate from the packaging system. A *lot* of problems > that Debian users have is because they're mixing Sid or Woody(unstable > Debian branches) packages in a Potato(stable Debian, currently) system. > This causes numerous problems. A lot of problems are also caused by > people side-stepping the package management system. Basically, if > 'apt-get' and 'dpkg' don't want to install a package, you shouldn't. > Things will break, and break badly. > > Thank being said, there are some 6000 packages or so for Debian's Sid > branch. That's an awful lot of packages :) Most are pretty up-to-date, > too, except for a few notable exceptions like Mozilla(which is currently > stalled at M18). It's not too often that you'll have to do a manual > installation of an app. If the occasion arises, it's not too hard to > make your own .deb out of a source tarball, but I'll leave that exercise > up to you :) > > David Barclay Harris, Clan Barclay > Aut agere, aut mori. (Either action, or death.)