Annotated edit history of
PackageManagement version 12, including all changes.
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AristotlePagaltzis |
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PackageManagement gives the SystemAdministrator (whether that be an administrator of a large network of machines, or Joe Schmoe at his single-user Linux desktop) rapid, easy control over which [Package]s are installed. The [Package] format and corresponding PackageManagementTool used is one of the major points of difference between [LinuxDistribution]s. In general, PackageManagement has to perform at least the following tasks: |
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* install [Package]s, |
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* maintain a database of already installed ones, |
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* upgrading them, |
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* and uninstalling [Package]s. |
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It is nowadays commonly considered a requirement for PackageManagement to also address dependencies - which means it should make sure to at least notify the SystemAdministrator when they're trying to install a [Package] that won't work because it depends on other software not currently installed. For example, some [GUI] application may require [GTK] and/or [GNOME] libraries to run. These are of course also provided as [Package]s. Those may again depend on other packages, which may in turn have their own dependecies - and so on. |
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As you can imagine, installing any not entirely trivial package can take ages and turn out to be a very frustrating job. Therefor, most contemporary [PackageManagementTool]s were designed to ease the laborous task of meeting all the dependencies of a particular package by resolving them automatically. Binary based distributions usually rely on ''front-ends'' such as [APT] built on top of their original more simple-minded [PackageManagementTool]s, while source based distributions tend to have intelligent dependency management by default. To be able to automatically resolve dependencies, such [PackageManagementTool]s use an external repository (or several ones) of [Package]s, usually at least one run by the distributor. |
