On Fri, 2006-05-19 at 02:00, Paul Howarth wrote: > > > > -U always works and saves the time of thinking about whether > > it's the first install or not. I think the kernel is the > > only thing that lets you keep multiple copies anyway. > > It isn't the *only* thing (the qt4 package going through the Extras > review process at the moment springs to mind as an example I came across > yesterday) but packages have to be carefully designed to be > parallel-installable by using version/release numbers in all pathnames > to avoid pathname conflicts. For most packages containing binaries, this > isn't even possible. The kernel (and associated modules) are certainly > the only things commonly parallel-installed. Personally, I think it would have been better if the installer had been designed for parallel installation as the general case to handle both multiple concurrent versions of the same package and alternate packages containing the same-named binary (like java, sendmail, etc. or x86 and x86_64 versions) since those are fairly obvious needs and the 'replacement' case then just needs to erase the old one. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
