Nat Gross wrote:
I use smart, myself. And in smart, I can "lock" a package and make sure
that it doesn't go anyplace. I can even see in advance what "smart" is
going to upgrade or downgrade or remove /before/ it happens.
No, don't /dump/ yum. But neither should you use it as your primary
package updater. I keep it around for certain situations such as
"repository reported unexpected size" that I've been seeing lately from
some of the jpp repos.
Temlakos
I used to use (on FC2) the RH Update program, but that was well below my
expectations.
Yum was wonderful - until now. (I guess it made up for being 'wonderful'.))
Is the current RH updater any good? And what is Smart? How long have you
been using it?
-nat
Forget the RHN up2date program. It broke beyond easy repair on FC4. I
understand that a rebuild of it is planned for FC5.
Smart is a new kind of package manager. You can find details on
http://www.smart.org/, and you can get "smart" on Axel's at-stable repo.
(yum install smart smart-gui smart-update). I have the full graphical
interface. You define channels of all types: yum repos, apt repos
(including apt-for-Debian and apt-for-RPM), mirror lists, and, of
course, a channel for your own RPM installed base. You can have as many
repos as you want, and you can assign different /priorities/ to
different repos (and different packages on each repo) to minimize
conflicts. Better yet, the first time you use smart, you can execute an
option called "Fix All Problems" that will iron out any conflicted
relationships among your installed packages.
All of the above is necessary because at least two different kinds of
repos exist, which use two different versions of source code to build
from. So I rate the Fedora base, updates-released, extras, and livna at
priority 10, kde at 9, freshrpms, dag, and dries at 8, and at-stable at
7 (except that on at-stable, I rate smart, smart-gui, smart-update, and
smart-debuginfo at priority 10 across the board). Those are just my
personal preferences. That way, you'll get the most recent package at
the highest priority, and you'll stop most conflicts from happening.
Interestingly, if you install smart right now, you'll pull in a special
multi-channel configurator from at-stable. Go ahead and let that install
/before/ you open smart for the first time. Then it should detect most
of your channels and list them for you, including your own RPM installed
base.
Smart's manual and Help system are very rich. Use them! Believe me, you
can't go wrong. Smart can get annoying sometimes, but at least it
wouldn't have removed mysql without at least /warning/ you that this was
going to happen!
Temlakos
