[PlanetCCRMA] Re: (newbie) questions on the FC5 CCRMA and package management

[Nigel Henry]

On Thursday 20 July 2006 03:31, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 08:57:24PM +0200, Nigel Henry wrote:
> > > My conclusion is that audioapps and adiovideoapps are still managed
> > > under apt. Correct? (want to know before I try and mess up
> > > something...)
> >
> > No. You need to use Yum now, or Yumex, Yums GUI (which is crap compared
> > to synaptic) if you are looking for specific apps from planetccrma.
>
> Or you can still use apt/synaptic even with planteccrma FC5. Surprise,
> surprise! (see below)

Interesting.
>
> > > Is the package manager bound to change in the future to be only yum?
> >
> > That I don't know. I certainly hope not as Apt, along with Synaptic were
> > so much better.
> >
> > btw. You can DL Apt from Fedora Extras using Yum. Then DL Synaptic using
> > either Yum, or Apt. I am using Apt for all the Fedora updates, etc, and
> > just using Yum for the planetccrma stuff, as I've no choice there.
>
> You have more than one choice. Use smart and/or apt. Both can process
> either apt metadata or yum (repomd) metadata. The apt from Fedora
> Extras already comes with repomd examples which you can adjust for
> PlanetCCRMA (or read the man page). The bottom line is that you can
> still use synaptic or smart --gui on *any* PlanetCCRMA repository
> including FC5.

I'll look into this, as I much prefer Apt, and Synaptic.
>
> > > Second question: Which other package collections go together with
> > > planetccrma? I would assume atrpms, since they mirror
> > > planetccrma. Are there any "recommended" and "stay away from"
> > > lists?
> >
> > Personally I'd stay away from atrpms. In fact I'd stay away from all
> > other repos, and keep them commented out, or "enabled=0" in the case of
> > Yum, when doing either an apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, or Yum
> > update.
>
> Well, personally I can only cordially recommend ATrpms. :)

Sorry Axel. I wasn't deliberately trying to criticise your repo.
>
> But personal preferences aside: Note that any half-enabled repo is
> doomed to break. Don't recommend to people to selectively/partially
> enable repos on demand as some dependencies will break. It is better
> to never use a repo than to create bugs by wrong usage.

My suggestion, was only related to apps like unrar, lame, etc, that are not 
available from Fedora, and do not have any specific dependencies. For example 
I uncommented Dags repo yesterday, as I saw on the clamav site that there was 
a newer version of clamav available. Synaptic showed the package maintainer 
as Dag for the already installed clamav, therefore I used his repo for the 
update. At the same time I saw that unrar, and lame, which I havn't updated 
for ages had updates available, and again verified that the original installs 
were from Dags repo. I did the updates, then commented out Dags repo, as 
there was other stuff there available as updates, which was either originally 
installed from Fedora repos, or planetccrma, and did not want to risk doing 
an apt-get dist-upgrade, and possibly messing the system up.

I also got chkrootkit while I was on Dags repo, and again no dependencies were 
involved. If I'd seen loads of dependencies, needing already installed 
packages being upgraded, I would have passed on installing it. Again that is 
just me. 

Of course I need to keep some sort of record as to where I got these extra 
packages from, so is normally keeping a record with pencil and paper.  I know 
you can set up apt to only upgrade certain packages from specific repos, and 
is probably the better way to go if security updates are involved. I'm on the 
pencil and paper at the moment.
>
> > If you need specific packages, for example, unrar, lame,
> > etc. Uncomment the repo in /etc/apt/sources.list, or in the case of
> > Yum, set enabled=1. Get the package, then disable those repos. I
> > don't care what anybody says, but there can be big problems when
> > upgrading the system from multiple repos.
>
> Would you diagnose the bugs that selective/partial enabling of repos
> bring in and guide users with broken setups? If so, then please add it
> to the above statement. Otherwise please keep recommendations to
> either fully use or not use a repo at all, because no repo maintainer
> is supporting this.

As I've stated above, I was referring to specific packages that are not 
available from the Fedora repos. I have no experience of using another repo, 
yours for instance, for all system, and anything else upgrades, apart from 
planetccrma. I certainly would not recommend getting upgrades to your system 
from more than one repo, as, as you have stated, you could end up with a 
broken setup.
>
> Sorry for being so harsh, but I'm getting swamped with spurious bug
> reports where after exchanging 10 mails the error seems to be
> following a recommendation of allowing only say myth* packages from
> ATrpms w/o considering that mythtv has more than 2 dozens of
> (in)direct depednencies on packages not starting with myth*, the most
> prominent example being libmyth ...

No Problem.  Nigel.