Debian and SuSE both have package managers almost if not as good as distributions. Being binary or source-compiled has absolutely no relavency to the package database. Gentoo has an amazing source database, and debian (and SuSE, to a lesser extent) has an amazing binary package tree. Of course, technically, most Gentoo programs can be installed mostly from binary (though I think it still does the linking) and most Debian packages allow for retreiving the source.

Unless portage-ng (Gentoo next-generation) takes over I don't see the linux-wide community settling on a package format.

Gentoo binary packages are complete binary packages, no linking involved.

Quote:Oluseyi
Can we be a little less reactionary, please? And before proferring "solutions" to problems, can we understand these problems first? Gentoo is not a solution to the problem because it doesn't operate at the same level: Gentoo requires building from source on each target machine, which is possible on all distros. Package management is about deploying and administering pre-compiled binaries.

I know you're not a fan of Gentoo, but you don't have to build every machine from scratch. There's a package CD for a binary install and once you've built any of the packages the way you want, you can just mount an nfs share of them and use them on other PCs. Right-now, the only thing you have to build from source is the kernel and drivers, and you only have to do that once too.

When is rpm going to support automatic dependacy resolution? The package mangement systems of Gentoo and Debian are vastly superior to rpm due to this simple issue alone.

It looks like rpm has a rebuild tool now and use flags?

Quote:Original post by bobstevens
Funny how an "Isn't Gentoo better than any other Linux distro???" post shows up on every message board, occasionally thinly veiled. Am I forced to post a http://funroll-loops.org/ link?

Debian's package management is fine, although occasionally annoying on the human level. I didn't have much of a problem with RPMs when I used RedHat like four years ago, at least not after I started using rpmfind. I don't think I've seen a logical reason yet for compiling everything... it's a waste of time and bandwidth if you have good binary packages available.

Gentoo is better than any other distro. I do admit that I found that http://funroll-loops.org/ funny, though.

I migrated from RedHat to Gentoo more than a year ago, and at first I was very pleased with it. The package management system is great. As time went on though, I realized that it was a major pain in the arse, and often and unnecessary one to compile everything from source. I know run a Fedora system (and the integration of yap, while still not up to snuff with portage is nice). You might change your mind about gentoo when you realize that you're spending hours installing programs that can take me a minute or two, often with stock settings.

I've never really had much trouble with RPMs. Source I've never once had that one work. I wish I could kill whoever at Mandrake aranged their basic setup for RPMs though. The program they use by default is less than worthless and refuses to install almost anything forcing you to the command line. Kpackager on the other hand is mucho better. Mayby they've changed but I'm mostly an SuSE boy now. With RPMs your mostly at the mercy of its maker.

Most of the problems with any installation RPM or source is not really Linux or any one Distro;s falt. Its just that with so many Distros and versions floating around you just can't make it all work with everything all the time. If MS put out 100 variations of windows every year their users would be going through a similar thing.