Re: [PLUG] rpm -Va using apt = debsums

[Matthew Rosewarne <mukidohime@case.edu>]

On Thursday 12 July 2007, JP Vossen wrote:
> I am aware of aptitude (which Debian is now pushing over apt-get [1])
> and my script will use that instead of apt-get when it's available.  You
> have a good point about home brew scripts, I just vastly prefer command
> line interfaces in most cases.  'deb find foo' brings up all the
> packages related to foo in a nice little 'less' window, and I am quite
> happy with that.

Actually, aptitude is merely another wrapper around the same APT system as 
apt-get (libapt-pkg).

For finding relationships between packages, I would recommend checking out 
the "debtags" tool that can query various tags that are attached to packages, 
which describe their purpose, interface, or implementation.  The relatively 
new tool "ept-cache" brings APT and debtags together into one utility, as 
well as the popularity contest data (think last.fm applied to packages) and a 
full-text index of all package descriptions.  The relatively new KDE package 
manager "adept" uses the same infrastructure, called "libept".

> Kinda.  Yum is an add-on that makes RPM almost as good as APT in terms
> of package repositories and dependency resolution.  Before yum, rpm was
> not nearly as easy to use as APT (Google RPM dependency hell :).  But in
> general I know what you mean and agree.  I'm just translating things I
> know how to do in RPM to APT.

In terms of implementation, RPM is not equivalent to APT, but to dpkg.  They 
both handle the on-disk package files, including installation, removal, and 
other low-level manipulation.  dpkg and RPM alone cannot automatically handle 
dependencies and package repositories, as they operate on individual package 
files.  APT and YUM both provide higher-level functionality to automatically 
resolve dependencies (including conflicts) and fetch packages from remote 
repositories, among other things.  It is APT and yum that allow the users to 
simply request a package to install by name, instead of requiring them to 
manually find, download, and then install the package with RPM or dpkg.  APT 
isn't even dependent on any particular package format, as it can use either 
RPM or dpkg packages.  I don't believe yum currently has the ability to use 
package systems other than RPM.

One "problem" (depending on your viewpoint) with the "rpm" tool is that it 
tries to cover more of the scope of package management than a low-level 
packaging system should.  dpkg+APT keeps a clearer separation between 
low-level packaging and higher-level management.  dpkg+APT is currently in a 
better state than RPM+yum (or urpmi, zypp, up2date...) because RPM had a long 
lull in its development, though it has reawakened lately.

Hope this sheds some light on the topic.

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