Les Mikesell wrote: >> Hum well if the things are really needed for automated tasks they should >> be dependencies, and so always be available. > > No they shouldn't. You can run any command from any other > command without anyone needing to know that you might > try that. Unix-like systems are supposed to be a set of tools, > each including all the others. Yep, my point was that many types of "suddenly discover" are avoided by the dependencies in RPM, which is true. >> If you mean you suddenly >> discover that you needed some utility or app on a larger scale then you >> can just yum it in. > > If you are doing something interactive, don't mind taking a > break and starting over, and have a good internet connection. Well the Internet connection might be needed, but I was thinking about servers in this context. Yes it would be annoying if something ran for hours and only then you found it broke because of missing pieces, but maybe that is really telling you to package the 'something' to make the dependencies explicit. And.. the install everything approach does not scale well if extras really does eat all possible packages and you have gigabytes of weird and never-to-be-used games and stuff coming in. It potentially increases your security perimiter and definitely your update burden. >> I definitely like that better, that the machine is >> at least tending towards just having what it needs installed. > > Yes, for 'production' scenarios where everything you do has > been planned and tested that makes sense. It doesn't make > sense for the machines you use to develop improvements for > those machines and need to try things no one has tested > yet - or if you work with scripts developed elsewhere that > are likely to invoke programs you haven't installed. These programs might equally well not be packaged at all and so not be installed even in an install everything scenario. Install everything would then not have been the right medicine and still your scripts would break. >>> machine with 'everything' installed, how are you supposed to >>> find out what is available and if you like it? >> Lots of packages can be installed and not really discoverable from the >> system menus. If a commandline utility goes in /usr/bin then unless you >> know the name you will likely never be aware of it (I guess apropos >> might help). So "install everything" so I can try things is really >> "bloat me" with many things I will never know I have. > > OK, how do you try out those things? If you are content with > the packages from years ago, why install a new system at all? Sorry I didn't understand how that applied to what I said. For the record I like new stuff that is better than the old stuff. My point was that "install everything" is not the same as "discover everything". >> yum has some cool features. Try >> >> yum search java > > That was fun but the gazillion packages that scroll by turn > out to not include the one I'd actually want... Well then, plan B is to keep reading the list and discover new apps by hearing people complain about them ;-) -Andy
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