Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

linderox · 2008-01-16 15:33:13

1) I saw in the Internet a lot of comparasions articles about the DEB and RPM and other packages.
And I just understand one thing that RPM is bad, DEB is better and Gentoo is the best and Archlinux packages is like gentoo,but more useful
But I don't understand why... all of these use precompile packages,but why Archlinux pacman more useful than Deb apt-get packages?

2) Sometimes I want to install some program and usually there are only packages for Mandrake,Ubuntu,Fedore and etc Linux Distributions, but there is no any for Archlinux and there are no these program in repositories.
What to do? How to install it? I listen something about Alien, but I didn't find it on the Archlinux repository

Skittles · 2008-01-16 16:41:44

1) Imho it's much easier to compile things from source using the ABS. It's kinda thing between deb and gentoo.

2) In this cases download the sources (normaly a .tar.gz or a .tar.bz archive) and compile it by your own. Have a look in the wiki for details

linderox · 2008-01-16 17:03:42

Skittles wrote:

2) In this cases download the sources (normaly a .tar.gz or a .tar.bz archive) and compile it by your own. Have a look in the wiki for details

But on the other hand if I'll compile it by myself I will have no ability to fully delete it from my system if I will not sutisfy with it.
Is any way for deleting it if I will have a will?

Last edited by linderox (2008-01-16 17:11:08)

fwojciec · 2008-01-16 17:16:09

When you build a package with ABS it doesn't automatically install it on your system, but rather creates a package that can be later installed/removed with pacman.

linderox · 2008-01-16 17:51:08

Is it easy to make a package with ABS? maybe it is only one command do you know it? Should I read ABS howto?:)

xd-0 · 2008-01-16 18:31:45

You most of the time only need one thing to build a package in abs, and that is a PKGBUILD.
There are lots of PKGBUILDS in the aur. So most of the time you do not need to build your own
The tool you use is called makepkg to do the compiling and making of the package is called makepkg, and is also described under ABS in the wiki.
It can even install the created package and all its dependencies for you. And it's compatible with packman, so the package can be removed with packman.

blu3ness · 2008-01-17 03:22:49

ABS and pacman are by far the best package managers I have ever used, it's like pancake meeting maple syrup, just wonderful

Allan · 2008-01-17 03:50:45

blu3ness wrote:

..it's like pancake meeting maple syrup, just wonderful

OK, I'm going for an early lunch!

freakcode · 2008-01-17 15:37:15

blu3ness wrote:

ABS and pacman are by far the best package managers I have ever used, it's like pancake meeting maple syrup, just wonderful

Love the description

barebones · 2008-01-17 20:05:53

Also one thing to mention about pacman's packages (.pkg.tar.gz) is that they are simply gzip'd archives while debs and rpms have some special format (I believe). This means one less layer of complexity to deal with (very KISS).

Also, this looks like a pretty good forum post to look at (I found it on the wiki).

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=1590

Last edited by barebones (2008-01-17 20:06:16)

augegr · 2008-01-17 23:38:27

deb behaves as a gzip archive too.

schivmeister · 2008-01-18 06:51:26

ABS is a package manager..? o.O

O.o

O.O

I had a dream. I pacman -U *.rpm and it worked!

hacosta · 2008-01-18 18:35:45

schivmeister wrote:

I had a dream. I pacman -U *.rpm and it worked!

More like a nightmare

likpok · 2008-01-19 04:12:52

From what I hear, RPM used to have very bad dependency checking.

From my experiences, apt and pacman are about even. Pacman has abs, and apt has the checkinstall script, which does the same thing (generates a package that can be manually upgraded).

Other points: Apt has a strange multi-command syntax (apt-get vs apt-cache) which can be a littke strange to the new user.

Apt has easier to remember commands (search, install, etc versus -Ss, -S)

Portage offers the advantage of USE-flags, which let you customize software much more (don't want X? don't want CUPS? don't install them)

Gentoo has a few amazing toos that I wish other distrobutions would copy, such as dispatch-conf, eselect, and rc-update.

schivmeister · 2008-01-19 11:52:00

how about pacman -U *.exe ?

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-01-19 11:52:49)

Bestiapeluda · 2008-01-19 13:48:45

pacman -U "all the Inernet".
That feature comes with pacman 4

Zer0 · 2008-01-19 21:43:06

pacman -R "last 2 posts" Just Kidding!

damjan · 2008-01-20 01:19:05

The differences between .pkg.tgz .deb and .rpm are not very signficant or even important. Mostly the packages have the same information and the same files.
Pacman uses the simple tar.gz format that contains all the package files plus the package special files.
A .deb file is an 'ar' archive that contains two separate tar.gz/bz2 archives for files and control data. This has the benefit of not having to uncompress the whole archive to just extract the control data (dependencies, filelist, md5 checksums, signatures). RPM is similar but they use a cpio format archive (also gz/bz compressed).

There are also some other subtle differences that are not so important. Like the difference in databases each system uses for storing package information (local/installed and available). This is really implementation detail since on different distros it could be even differently implemented. Pacman uses normal files in a dir structure in /var/lib/pacman. RPM uses a Berkley DB IMHO. I dunno about Debian.

All of the systems can use local files, ftp and http repositories to get and install packages, so that's mostly the same. All systems support dependencies, and all work fine with them.

Pacman as pretty much the most recent system, IMHO, has the best UI of them all. One command for all actions (except building packages as it should be). Debian OTOH has a lot of different commands which is not so great. Package building is also very simple on Arch, with the PKGBUILD files and the makepkg command. It's not very hard in Debian or Redhat either, so that's not a big difference.

NOW the main difference IS NOT the package type!!!
The main difference is how the packages are designed themselves. The community that builds the packages makes the difference. For example, Ubuntu and Debian apply a lot of patches to their packages. For ex. their X init scripts don't load the ~/.xprofile file (which pisses me off). Then there's the problem (most common in RedHat/Fedora and off-shots) of insane dependencies that are always problematic. So what differentiates all the systems is the community and the normatives they build.

I like Arch's approach since it ships very compact packages without a lot of dependencies, and without separate packages for include files, libraries etc (in most packages at least - there are exceptions where it makes sense of course). This makes it simpler for everyone actually.

OTOH I don't like how Arch packages are stripped of documentation files... Maybe this made sense in the past, but today I don't see a benefit of stripping the documentation, and it can be very handy in situations when you are off the grid (yes that happens ).

I personally don't like that the qt4 package will be named qt, but that's another topic on this forum .

More info about RPM and DEB here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.rpm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.deb

damjan · 2008-01-20 01:27:41

Wow, that was one long post . But I forgot something...

Both DEB and RPM support cryptographic signatures for their packages which is of a big importance when you download files from mirrors. IMHO, this is a big shortcoming in Pacman.

Also.. and this was discussed at one time .. a feature I'd like to see in any of the package systems is a possibility for "transactions". For ex. if I execute "pacman -S xxx yyy uuu iiii" and any of the installation fails for any reason, I'd like the system rolled back as if nothing happened. This is not implemented in any of the systems I know of (Foresight perhaps?!?)... and is not easy to do either. I expect to see something on this topic from the kernel (fs) developers too.

Misfit138 · 2008-03-11 15:47:06

linderox wrote:

1) I saw in the Internet a lot of comparasions articles about the DEB and RPM and other packages.
And I just understand one thing that RPM is bad, DEB is better and Gentoo is the best

Hogwash.
People use what is best for them, or what they've gotten used to, or have become comfortable with. Sometimes this comfort turns into something uglier, like fanboyism, or worse still, a pathological obsession.
Package management is a system common to all GNU/Linux distros. Try them all and use the tool that you like best.
For me, pacman is the most comfortable.

ora · 2008-03-12 01:31:25

pacman always works.
With RPM you may find libxxx.so is missing but yyy depends on it.
With DEB you break down at one deb, you fix it or apt break down.
I'm joking.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-16 15:33:13

Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#2 2008-01-16 16:41:44

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#3 2008-01-16 17:03:42

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#4 2008-01-16 17:16:09

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#5 2008-01-16 17:51:08

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#6 2008-01-16 18:31:45

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#7 2008-01-17 03:22:49

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#8 2008-01-17 03:50:45

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#9 2008-01-17 15:37:15

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#10 2008-01-17 20:05:53

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#11 2008-01-17 23:38:27

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#12 2008-01-18 06:51:26

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#13 2008-01-18 18:35:45

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#14 2008-01-19 04:12:52

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#15 2008-01-19 11:52:00

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#16 2008-01-19 13:48:45

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#17 2008-01-19 21:43:06

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#18 2008-01-20 01:19:05

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#19 2008-01-20 01:27:41

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#20 2008-03-11 15:47:06

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

#21 2008-03-12 01:31:25

Re: Pacman vs DEB, RPMS, etc

Board footer