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A critique of package managers

(www.gingerbill.org)
109 points gingerBill | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
1. sombragris ◴[] No.45168136[source]
> How do I manage my code without a “package manager”? [...] Through manual dependency management.

Slackware Linux does precisely that.

I'm a Slackware user. Slackware does have a package manager that can install or remove packages, and even a frontend that can use repositories (slackpkg), but it does have manual dependency resolution. Sure, there are 3rd-party managers that can add dependency resolution, but they do not come with the distro as default.

This is a very personal opinion, but manual dependency management is a feature. Back in the day, I remember installing Mandrake Linux 9.2 and activating the (then new-ish) framebuffer console. The distro folks had no better idea than to force a background "9.2" image on framebuffer consoles, which I hated. I finally found the package responsible for that. Removing it with urpmi, however, meant removing all the graphical desktop components (including X11) because that stupid package was listed as a dependency of everything graphical.

That prompted me to seek alternatives to Mandrake and ended up using Slackware. Its simplicity had the added bonus of offering manual dependency resolution.

replies(1): >>45168967 #
2. seba_dos1 ◴[] No.45168967[source]
Sounds like "alias dpkg=dpkg --force-depends"?
replies(1): >>45169384 #
3. sombragris ◴[] No.45169384[source]
Perhaps; I'm not really knowledgeable on the ways of Debian.