DEB vs RPM (Was: RE: [oclug] the unix way)

[Jon Earle]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Gilles J. Seguin wrote:

> Jonathan Earle wrote:
> > 
> > You spoke, but did not really speak to the point.  DEB and RPM packages
> > suffer from the _same_ problem, that being lack of discipline on the part of
> > package maintainers insofar as building properly thought out dependancies.
> > This is notsaying Debian... it's naysaying some of the people building the
> > DEBs.  My example stands... why do I have to install LDAP just to get a
> > mailer?
> 
> Because the application does not used dynamic loading at run
> time. If the application provide this option. What append to the
> dependencies ? Is it one or not if you do not used it.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand what you mean here.  Could you
clarify this a bit please?

> In your case, adding --without-ldap to the configure line
> and re-packaging will had taking less time than writing
> this letter.
> 
> Go to a car dealer, and tell him that is stupid to provide
> cars with a radio because it cost more.

Not the same thing.  Straight SMTP mail has no requirement for
LDAP.  There is no good reason to force both sendmail and exim to require
the LDAP package.  I had no idea about the --without-ldap option for
sendmail ./configure, it's been a while since I built sendmail.  I might
as well just download raw sendmail source and roll my own like I used to a
year or so ago... that way I can guarantee that I only get what I want.

Which then leads to the question - what has the package management system
done for me?  I can't use it because someone thought I'd appreciate the
kitchen sink along with my shiny new car (to expand on your example
above) and so I might as well just ditch it and do things the old
fashioned way with nice fresh tarballs, yes?  

I've not built a package before... why would I build a package from source
and install from the package vs just building from source like the old
days?

Cheers!
Jon