setup package format v. rpm, reasoning?

[Peter Rehley]

On Feb 15, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Linda W wrote:

> I can imagine during the early development of cygwin, the rpm
> package types were rather "unsupportable" -- especially on a
> "first install", since no unix shell or coreutils are available.
>
> However, after the basic support is installed, what was the reasoning
> for keeping packages in YAPM (YetAnotherPackageManager).
>
> It seems even a bit more surprising considering Cygwin's early
> roots coming from a RedHat...
>
> Why is the current setup.exe "format" still the preferred format?
> Would it be beneficial to start having the packages moved toward
> rpm format?  It would be useful, at times, to do the equivalent
> of an "rpm -qf <filelist>", or "rpm -qi" for info, etc...Yes,
> one can continue to reinvent the wheel by writing utils that parse
> file lists in /etc/setup, but it seems that would be 'reinventing'
> the wheel for no great purpose...
>
> So I guess I'm curious why Cygwin uses YAPM since RPM has been
> ported?  I'm not looking for any religious debates -- just
> technical/engineering reasons why a different package.  I'm not
> "sold" on the rpm package manager, just wondering why the need
> for creating another format?
It would require a new setup.exe.  The current setup program is a pure 
windows program.  This is needed because it doesn't require using any 
cygwin program or package.  If it used, say for example the 
cygwin1.dll, that dll couldn't be updated because windows won't allow 
files to be changed while they are in use.

So, the new setup would need  create a temporary cygwin environment 
that is totally separate from any already installed cygwin environment. 
  The environment could have rpm and do updates pointing to the cygwin 
environment being updated.

  Or setup would need non-cygwin programs that know how to use rpm.  
Both of these would require rewriting setup from scratch.  Do a search 
for discussions about why setup.exe hasn't been changed.

> It's weird -- I tried installing an RPM, and among files that
> were listed as 'missing' were /bin/rm, /bin/sh, /usr/bin/perl
> and libc -- I can see RPM not knowing about the libc package
> name, but the filenames?  I know they're installed, so what's
> the scoop?
rpm uses it's database to determine what is there or not.  While 
/bin/sh, etc, may be on the system, they aren't in the rpm database, 
and hence the error.
>
> Thanks,
> -linda
>
>
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Enjoy,
Peter
-------------------------------
A Møøse once bit my sister


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