Re: up2date, system-config-packages and synaptic

[Jim Cornette <cornette insight rr com>]

David Wagoner wrote:

> My question here is why is the fedora team wasting so
> much time developing up2date and
> system-config-packages when synaptic is already an
> excellent replacement.
Synaptic has pulled my OS out from under me a few times. Of course this 
is a front end to apt-get. Apt-get and it's  willingness to remove  200 
rpms to satisfy one packages requirements is not a good trade-off.

I could say that I was extremely impressed with how well red-carpet 
updater did on restoring systems to proper working order and resolving 
dependencies. I had a really broken system that I did an *rpm -i *.rpm 
--nodeps --force* - one that led to duplicate rpms, with different 
versions and red-carpet fixed all of the duplicated packages and 
remarkably restored the system.

Personally, I use up2date a lot and appreciate all of the improvements 
that have been made to the program. I found out that up2date is pretty 
reliable to even regard the arch of the original package. I had an i686 
version of a program installed and up2date did not flag the missing 
package, since it had an i686 version and only the i386 version of the 
program was available in the repository. Someone else pointed out the 
reason up2date did not notice the program as being new. Since it 
regarded the arch.

I updated the system with the later version manually and it did not seem 
to hose my system with the i386 version installed. It is good that 
up2date knew better. This is for rpms that really matter for i686 and 
i386 versions.

Up2date does take a long while resolving dependencies. This might be 
sped up with improvements in the file formats that up2date gets it's 
information from. (yum format, in this case). I haven't tried to use too 
many apt repositories. It is great that up2date can use apt repositories 
and probably does a decent job comparable to apt-get.

Having an easier interface to show available but not installed programs 
from a repository might be a good thing. Having a feature to resolve 
broken package problems, like red-carpet has would also be nice.

Don't get me wrong. I think synaptic and apt are good programs to have 
around. I just don't think that one should say that concentrating on one 
method over the other is futile.

> Even though it uses apt, worst
> case would be to get the latest source and code in
> support for yum then. 
see above, 200 packages need to be removed to satisfy foo.

> I have had nothing but problems
> with up2date. I have had packages fail to install and
> yet appear to be installed as far as up2date is
> concerned, 
Are the arch versions different?

> system-config-packages though its getting
> better still has a ways to go before it has the
> features that synaptic has. 
The last time that I used the program, it was broken. Red-carpet does a 
heck of a job installing packages too. No need to kill all development 
on system-config-packages because of synaptic has this, red-carpet has 
this and system-config-packages needs this still. It will get to a 
decent level eventualy.

> If the developers choose
> to continue to use up2date and system-config-packages,
> I will continue to use the products during the rest of
> the test phase but when Fedora Core 2 is released I
> plan on switching to synaptic. Synaptic is full of
> features, stable and fast. I look foward to seeing
> what everyone has to say on this subject.
>  
hopefully all methods will be better when FC2 is a final release.

Choice is good.

Jim

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--
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