After seven months of comprehensive development, the popular Unix software packaging tool RPM Package Manager (RPM) was released as stable version 5.0.0. This version builds portably on a wide variety of Unix platforms and includes initial support for XAR as a package format, among other features.
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Member since:2005-07-06
The full story:
http://lwn.net/Articles/196523/
- Gilboa
Member since:2005-08-20
Different side of the story: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/6/5/101431/9311
While I seriously doubt that Jeff wrote that, it's still a funny read.
Marcus
Member since:2005-11-02
This is very funny. I just tried this with a Debian box that has read only /usr and... aptitude update worked, install failed, remove failed. No package db inconsistencies were introduced. Installing and removing after /usr was remount,rw worked normally.
Gotta love RPM!
Member since:2005-11-12
wow, reading through that bug was kind of painful. It is unfortunate that people respond in a work environment with nastiness. There is no need for that. Johnson makes a reasonable argument that typing 'yum update' should not leave your system in a fragmented state if only part of a package is installed. I would think transactional accounting would be a requirement for updating a system. It makes me relieved that I got out of the software industry. It is annoying when good ideas get blocked based on egos and bad middle management.
Edited 2008-01-06 16:05
Member since:2005-07-24
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Member since:2005-07-06
I don't think you understood what was Johnson said (and why he got canned.)
The reporter claimed that the RPM state must always be consistent. RPM should have failed gracefully when trying to install a package on RO storage. (instead of being corrupted - read: stating that a certain application is installed when it isn't)
Johnston claimed that if the user is stupid enough to try and install RPMs on a read only storage, the RPM is not required to keep a consistent state when things get busted.
Software 101 - no matter how stupid your user get, your application must not crash and/or stay in an inconsistent state.
- Gilboa
Member since:
2006-08-01
> If I remember correct it was somekind of fork?
Jeff Johnson RPM : http://rpm5.org/ .
Red Hat/Fedora/SuSE/Mandriva RPM : http://www.rpm.org/ .
One of the reasons of Jeff Johnson fork :
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=119185