Re: [Gnumed-devel] re: installation

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:08, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 09:50, syan wrote:

 can you explain how apt-get works?
>

There are repositories of packages - mostly  at places like ftp.au.debian.org.
Firstly you set your apt-config to look at the repositories you want, and the 
standard of stability or excitement you want ie stable, testing, unstable.
Then apt-update downloads package lists and sorts them.
Then you check through what you want and advise apt-get to get and install 
them.
The brilliance here is that the dependencies are fully calculated, apt-get 
advises you what else it is going to get and you OK it; in whatever time the 
packages are downloaded, installed and ready to go.
I've tried mandrake's urpmi and it doesn't do it as well, you are dependent on 
mandrake package maintainence to have the packages ready, debian just has so 
many more maintainers on its volunteer squad and they have far more packages 
ready to go.

There are open-source versions of apt for other flavours of Linux, but the 
package lists aren't there, and you still have to wade through dependency 
hell to get apt installed in the first place.
Liz

-- 
"Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
make the simple next step of supporting multitasking."
-- George McFry