Poll about package management

[Ivan Kabaivanov]

On Monday 03 March 2008 04:55, Alexander E. Patrakov wrote:

Alexander,

I've added three new options that are important to me and to IPCop.

Thanks,
IvanK.




[  ] I am an editor of LFS or one of the related projects
[X] I use LFS as my primary Linux system
[X] I use LFS on more than one PC (including virtual machines)
[  ] I deviate a lot from LFS (not counting package updates as deviations)
[  ] I deviate a lot from BLFS (not counting package updates as deviations)
*[X] I use LFS on more than x86 (x86_64, ppc, ppc64, sparc64)
 
I use the following package management technique:
(X) It's all in my head!
(X) I trust the lists of files in the book
(  ) I rebuild everything every three months or less, so there is no need to manage anything!
(  ) Installation script tracing with installwatch or checkinstall
(  ) Installation script tracing with some other tool
(  ) Timestamp-based "find" operation
(  ) User-based
(  ) RPM
(  ) DPKG
(  ) Simple binary tarballs produced with DESTDIR
(  ) Other DESTDIR-based method of producing binary packages
(X) Other -- a diff between filesystem state from before and after a package installation (not good with overwritten files)
*(X) I rebuild everything every August after a LFS release

I *would like to* use the following features provided by a package manager: 
[X] Knowing where each file comes from
[X] Clean uninstallation of a package
[X] Removal of obsolete files when upgrading to a new version
[X] Ability to upgrade toolchain components (most notably, glibc) painlessly
[  ] Ability to revert mistakes easily and quickly by installing an old binary package
[X] Ability to compile once, deploy on many macines
[X] Scripting the build
 
I will ignore the future LFS advice on package management if it
[  ] Can't be applied on a busy machine where many files are accessed/modified everyy minute
[X] Can't be used to transfer packages to another machine
[  ] Interferes with config.site files described in DIY-linux
[X] Will clobber configuration files wen upgrading package versions
[  ] Doesn't explain how to package software beyond BLFS
[  ] Requires learning another language/syntax besides bash shell syntax
[  ] Exists at all
*[X] Breaks builds on x86_64, ppc, ppc64, sparc64