Re: SEUL: Article by Alan Cox

[cuplan@grove.ufl.edu]

> Well, I hate to disagree, but I think RPM works pretty well for
> installing, uninstalling, and keeping track of distributed precompiled
> software.  Yes, we certainly do need the X front end to it.  I don't
> know how DEB compares.

Well, I have an X frontend to it, and it's not that much better than the
command line method.  Mainly, my big gripe is that RPM tells me it's
installing the package and even lets me know how far from done it is, but
it DOESN'T tell me what it's doing, where the files it's installing are
going, etc., etc.  RPM a file.  Now go over and do a Windows install.  I'd
almost rather do the Windows install.  At least it gives me better
feedback.

Also, if you config/make/make install a lib, RPM won't recognize it, so
RPM is only really useful when you do nothing but install RPMs.

> And end users aren't gonna be doing configure/make/make install.  And,
> of course, RPM doesn't prevent you from doing that - I do it all the
> time on my RedHat system.

End-users aren't going to configure/make/make install?  Care to just lock
up the LSM and most Linux software and tell end-users they can't use it?
I'm sorry, but when I first installed Linux, the first three things I did
was get Netscape, WindowMaker, and ksIRC.  I think that maybe Netscape was
available in RPM, but I don't think it was.  What do you intend to do for
all the things NOT available as RPM files?

> It does sometimes, especially when the RPMs are not constructed well. 
> Like in RedHat, the postgresql and dosemu RPMs leave out some key
> things.  But I think there the fault lives with whoever made the RPMs,
> not RPM in general.

RPM causes problems becauase it acts like it's "above" the system...just
installing whatever wherever with little user feedback.  Does RPM update
files that need to know what it installs?  Does it check anything but its
little registry for critical files?  I don't think it does.

> There are already PPP configurators.  I tried them once but then gave up
> because I already had a working chat script and they were just causing
> trouble.

What if you didn't have a working chat script and didn't know how to write
one?  Wouldn't you want one?

> Cool!  That *will* be a good thing...

:) :) Good to know someone out there approves.  It's actually nearly done.
I just don't know enough about IPC to get the concurrently running
civserver and the GTK control panel I made to talk to each other.  I'd
prefer to do this without altering the civserver's code.

Cuplan.