Distro update methods [was RE: market continues to dive!]

[Rich Edelman]

On Tuesday 16 July 2002 02:08 pm, Michael wrote:
> Gentoo looks promising but it seems to harsh for my old P120 type boxes so
> I guess I agree it needs some work in the way of binary packages. Most of
> my complaints are in the area of what a pain it is to make deb or rpm
> packages that properly adjust themselves after relevant software is
> installed. For example if I have a PHP package installed already but add a
> expat package it doesn't automaticlly ask if I want to reload the PHP
> package with XML support turned on.

Well, Gentoo's big problem with binary packages is (or at least was, a while 
back) that not everyone on the Gentoo team would upload binaries of the 
packages they maintain. Or they would, but they would wait a couple of days 
(or weeks) before doing so.

Gentoo also seems to have half-solved your problem with debs and rpms. I say 
half-solved, because either you need to know way ahead of time that you're 
going to want PHP with XML support (in which case, when you build PHP it will 
first install the dependencies for XML support), or after you install your 
XML package, you remember to throw 'XML' in the USE line of your 
/etc/make.conf and recompile PHP.

Maybe one of these days someone will get it right, and Gentoo doesn't seem to 
be too far off.

Rich