Re: [Nolug] Distro suggestions

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 18:56, Tim Kelley wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 10:43 am, Alex McKenzie wrote:
> > So what makes the deb system work for deep upgrades? I remember the
> > horrors I went through with rpm, especially the snafu of upgrading to
> > rpm-4. Is deb more flexible about dependencies? Or is it just the
> > convenience of apt?
>
> It's really simple
>
> rpm has file level dependency resolution
> deb has package level dependency resolution
>
> Of course package level makes more sense. There is no dependency hell
> in debian stable.
>
> Example: deb's have "depends" but also the opposite, "provides", which
> is nice.

What they also have is "conflicts", so if there's really a situation
where 2 packages can't be installed together, if you have X installed,
and it conflicts with Y, and try to install Y, apt will tell you
that it's going to remove X. Of course, it doesn't just blindly do
it; it prompts you to continue.

And, if it hasn't been mentioned yet, the debian package system
also hase "recommends" and "suggests", which are package that add
value to the base package, but aren't *necessary*.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"Man, I'm pretty. Hoo Hah!"
Johnny Bravo
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