Autopackage Struggling to Gain Acceptance
Linked by Eugenia Loli on Tue 13th Feb 2007 00:09 UTC, submitted by Dolores Parker
General Development 14 months ago, the Autopackage project was small and active, and members sounded optimistic about its success. Now, although the alternative installer project continues, progress has almost come to a halt. The #autopackage channel on irc.oftc.net sits vacant most days, the developer blogs cover almost anything except the project, and commits to the source code repository have become rare. Formally, the project is still alive, but the major contributors all agree that it is faltering. So what happened?
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Siamhie
Member since:
2007-02-05

this is a big reason why you need a good package manager to resolve dependencies.

No you don't.

Slackware's package management is just as good as the ones found on any other distro.
The only difference is checking for dependencies is left up to the user.


http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.html#PACKAGE-MANAGEMENT

Apparently many people in the Linux community think that a packager manager must by definition include dependency checking. Well, that simply isn't the case, as Slackware most certainly does not. This is not to say that Slackware packages don't have dependencies, but rather that its package manager doesn't check for them. Dependency management is left up to the sysadmin, and that's the way we like it.

Reply Parent Score: 1

superstoned Member since:
2005-07-07

and imho, dependency checking AND resolving is the most important job a package manager has (I can un-tar a package myself, thank you) so imho slackware is just fun for self-punishment. But hey, have fun!

Reply Parent Score: 3

DeadFishMan Member since:
2006-01-09

I like Slackware a lot even if I donīt really use it that often, but I tend to agree with you. The lack of dependency checking is somewhat embarrassing.

But Slack makes up for that by outlining clearly what the dependencies are on sites such as LinuxPackages.net so that you know each and every file that you need to download in order to install using pkgtool.

And there is slapt-get and others that are intended to be used as package managers just like other distros. I donīt know how effective they are compared to their counterparts on other distros, though.

And I really donīt know why but Slack seems to be fairly popular in my country (Brazil). All the websites somehow related to Linux shows a larger number of Slack users than other distros with Ubuntu with a slight second and then followed by the local distros including Mandriva, which has an excellent Brazilian localization. Perhaps it is not nearly as hard as it is rumoured to be? ;)

Reply Parent Score: 2