[Linux] RPM Repositories

[Kendrick Vargas]

Kwan Lowe wrote:
> So to your question: Yes, you are somewhat limited by your choice of
> distribution. You generally cannot install an RPM package from one
> distribution onto another without rebuilding or running into package
> dependency issues.

I was with you for most of the explanation. In fact, I'm willing to say
that almost (nix the above statement) should probably be included in the
FAQ for flux. Very nice write up indeed :-)

As for the above, it's wrong. While RPM might not be the best package
management choice in the world, saying that you can't mix packages
between distributions is pessimistic at best. The various distributions
have done a pretty good job lately of keeping sane/common package name
and versioning schemes. Packages define in their header what other
packages they depend on and the minimum version of those packages. And
from time to time I've taken packages from an older (or sometimes newer)
distribution of the same family, or even transplant them from another
family alltogether (suse on fedora, etc).

Another thing you might want to mention about repositories: they can
also ENHANCE an existing distribution. Recent fedora distributions have
made it fairly easy to mix and match various extra repositories to get
updated functionality. Fedora Legacy (RIP) operated on this principle to
maintain legacy fedora distributions. Alex Thimm (sp?) runs atrpms.net
which is one of the best ways to turn a fedora distribution into a
MythTV box, or simply get better multimedia. FreshRPM's, pptp, livna,
etc... all use repositories to enhance existing distributions.
			-peace