[Apt-Rpm] What is the best choice for RPM Update Tool

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008, Quan phongvan wrote:

> Dear Axel,
> Thank you for your advice, I appreciate it. While using simultaneously three
> update tools: apt-rpm, yum,  smart, I tried to do non-update install
> packages and then do full update for CentOS 4.5 system also. Every results
> show that apt-rpm and smart can beat yum almost easily both of time and
> system resources consuming. But for long-term business POV, yum still the
> biggest candidate for update tool.

Yes, apt is easily the fastest of the lot, especially in terms of raw 
depsolving speed. It's worth noting that latest upstream versions of yum 
are much faster than the version shipped with CentOS 4.5 and smartpm has 
seen some big improvements in latests versions too (based on changelogs, 
haven't actually tried).

> In addition, how about LUA, how does it get involve in apt-rpm to provide
> more powerful advance tools that maybe you can't do with pure apt-* command
> line.

Apt is highly tailorable and scriptable with lua extensions. Yum does have 
plugin support too, and apparently smart has too (unsurprising as smart is 
being developed by the same person who implemented Lua support in apt :) 
but it seems to be rather undocumented feature.

The thing is, all the depsolvers have their own pros and cons. What 
exactly would apt/yum/smart do on your embedded OS? Apply updates in 
automated fashion and little else? Are you going to build the whole distro 
by yourself or use existing distro to create a minimal install tailored 
for your needs? Will you require some sort of authentication mechanism for 
systems retrieving updates? What kind of hardware will the system be 
running (Intel CPU or something more "embedded" such as ARM where 
cross-compilation enters the picture)?  These kind of things have a huge 
impact on what makes sense or is even possible. Just as an example: if you 
were to base your product on RHEL (OEM deals and all) with updates coming 
from RHN, apt and smart are immediately out of the question because they 
cannot talk to the RHN server.

 	- Panu -