[Mageia-discuss] Package management system

[Thomas Lottmann]

>
> Le mardi 28 septembre 2010 à 20:02 +0200, nicolas vigier a écrit :
>    
> to be fair, yum is already in the repository, so does smart.
> Apt-rpm is unmaintained, but if someone does the job of taking care of
> it, it could also be.
>
> And we also have poldek too, not sure about the status of this one.
>
> So, for people who are not happy with the default, do not hesitate to
> test others packages managers and report issues ( for example, yum does
> requires specific indexes that we do not provides at mandriva, but we
> could add them if required, i guess ).
>    

As you have just brought up Smart here, I did remember about it and 
though about this.

Some time ago, there was an employees from MandrakeSoft who was working 
on Smart and developping it just like RPMDrake has been developped up to 
now. Yet, back to the previous cost cutting plans the company already 
did, it was decided to only keep RPMDrake as main package manager and 
the employee working on Smart was fired, even though Smart was very 
popular at that time.

Since then, looking at Smart's GUI, it looks like it has not been 
significantly improved since a long time. Lookign in the package's 
history, the fixes show it is maintained only to prevent it from being 
broken.

I know there are several people who are not satisfied with RPMDrake, 
this because they prefer to have a package manager with a different 
philosophy or other kind if conception. I believe Smart could then be 
improved both in text and GUI if people are encouraged to develop and 
work on it. It could offer yet another approach then for package 
management.

Yet, there will have also to be a lot of work on the DrakXtools as well, 
but helping Smart regaining some useful evolution might not be bad for 
people who want a more technically evolved package manager than 
RPMDrake, or something different. At least, I think it would make more 
sense to focus on both RPMDrake and Smart rather than asking for 
Synaptics or others.

This is just a proposal, as I know it is still appreciated and was 
actively developped in the past. But if I got something wrong, please 
fix me then. :-)

Skiper