[H-GEN] SMALL RPM PROBLEM

[Jason Parker-Burlingham]

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Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> writes:

> Robert Kearey wrote:
> | "Words to the effect" doesn't mean much - what you probably did was
> | something like this:
> | rpm -Uvh foo.i386.rpm
> | [oops, I want to uninstall]
> | rpm -e foo.i386.rpm
> | error: package foo.i386.rpm is not installed
> | rpm -e foo is what you want.
> 
> This is a perfect example of the glaring faults that infest most
> of the package management systems out there.  If you have to use
> a different name to uninstall the thing from the name you used
> to install it, then the tool you're condemned to use is just
> broken.  (This afflicts the FreeBSD packages as well, it's not
> just a Linux thing.)

I'd probably agree with that sentiment.  However, many of us have
simply learned that "vorbis-tools_1.0.0-1_i386.deb" is the name of the
*file* with the "vorbis-tools" (version 1.0.0-1) package inside.  The
mental hoops aren't that tough to jump through.

[Oh, as an aside:  I was at the library a few weeks ago and was
 leafing through a little Windows mag, which had a page or two about
 Linux, and a pricing inset down bottom-right.  According to them, Red
 Hat Linux is the most expensive, followed maybe by some other
 distributions, but "FreeBSD Linux" is FREE!  Congrats to the FreeBSD
 homies!]

> The other area of great suckage is seen when somebody installs
> foo-1.2 and then installs foo-1.3 and then decides to uninstall
> foo-1.2 and all sorts of really unintuitive stuff happens.

Well that's just silly.  A package manager shouldn't let you do that
(just as dpkg doesn't; foo-1.3 is an upgrade and will replace
foo-1.2).

One thing I remember from my RedHat days, which I hope isn't true
anymore, is finding that some packages owned conflicting sets of
files.  That really jerked me around.

> Of course, it's not easy to get package managers right (or else they
> would all work properly all the time),

All software sucks.

> but the end result is that it is often true that it's good to use
> packages for some of the software you want to install and not for
> other software.  Learning which is which is a painful and tedious
> process.

Yeah.  I remember fdisking and starting over when I removed /usr/doc
to "save space" (I think it saved me maybe a couple of megs) and then
found it was *really* *hard* to ditch some packages and that I was
totally stuck.  In retrospect I guess there were probably a couple of
things I could have done.

And then again, we have the case from a year or two after that fiasco,
when I literally pulled the plug on the computer while the package
manager was installing the system, took it home, fskced, and got the
whole shebang working again despite what I'd done.

Sweet.

jason
-- 
``I may have agreed to something involving a goat.''  -- CJ

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