[wellylug] How does Suse handle RPM dependencies?

[Volker Kuhlmann]

I don't know how those Mandrake programs work so I can't compare.

> How does Suse handle it?  Is there some kind of central database at Suse
> for dependencies, that its GUI tool uses?  Also,is there an equivalent

Yes. Run yast2 and select online update. You have to specify a repository,
you can chose ftp.suse.com, any mirror, or a local disk directory. The
latter useful if you rsync the updates to local disk first, then update N
machines from that. It will update all installed packages to their latest
versions (i.e. install updates).

Alternatively, I find rpm -UvhF very nice too.

There is a third-party updates-installer as well, if you prefer, which is
quite popular (forgot its name).

If you select a package to install from yast (which is now always yast2),
dependencies will be installed as well, prompting for any necessary CD in
turn. You can also run yast2 -i packagename, which results in the same
action.

Dependencies in general are handled as well as Debian does it for packages
which have been compiled for the distribution. Rpms are generally built with
automatic dependency generation, i.e. dependencies for all shared libraries
are in the package.

> to the penguin liberation front (useful for stuff that is legal outside
> of the US, e.g. encrypted DVD reading)?

Luckily SuSE is not an American company. To save the trouble of having a
separate package in the supposedly-free country, nothing which isn't legal
in the US is included in the CDs. :((( In the case of mplayer, hooks are
provided that you can trivially edit the spec file and recompile yourself,
however I found that finding the necessary additional programs/libraries
wasn't so easy. Like with any distro, you're free to install additional
packages. As above, if they were made for the distro they should give no
trouble (of course there can always be package cowboys - which is not
restricted to any particular distro). There are a number of smaller
collections of rpms for SuSE, but don't bother looking at rpmfind, they have
a mental horizon from redhat to redhat.

SuSE 8.2 ships with 2 DVDs (due end Apr), will be interesting to see whether
there's more software on that.

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann			is possibly list0570 with the domain in header
http://volker.dnsalias.net/		Please do not CC list postings to me.


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