[TriLUG] dependency hell, yum & web forums

[Magnus Hedemark]

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Byarlay, Wayne A. wrote:

> Aha, I've got PHP installed! ...But I've been stuck in "Dependency Hell"
> before, haha! I didn't know it was such a well-known hell. (It was for
> installing Plone).

Oh you need to learn yum (it's easy, and developed locally @ Duke U.)

With yum, you just tell it what package or group of packages you want to 
install, and yum figures out all of the dependencies that need to be 
fulfilled in order to install the specified packages.  It can also go 
through the same steps to remove a package or group of packages.

If you're running Fedora, cAos or White Box Enterprise Linux, yum is 
already installed.  Otherwise you can get it at 
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/index.ptml

If you have a number of RPM-based machines at work, it is *cake* to set up 
your own repository (See my Six Simple Steps to a Yum Repository at 
https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2003-December/003165.html  ).  
You can even define groups in yum to cluster related packages for 
departments or user types if you like (not explained in the Six Simple 
Steps HOWTO).

Debian users are rightfully proud of apt-get.  Yum is even simpler 
(usually less typing to accomplish the same ends, and the commands are 
even more intuitive).