[SATLUG] Re: Yum considered harmful for compiling your own software?

[Richard Maynard]

> My question is "How comfortable are you using alien?".
> The basis for this question is my experience with mixing RPM repositories.
> A nightmare...
> Now we are talking mixing mixed RPM repositories with "deb" repositories?

Where I am currently employeed we standardized years ago on the use of
DPKG for all of our packaging needs. We use sun packages and rpm's for
the OS on Solaris/Redhat systems, but use DPKG for anything we put on
there. Fast forward almost a decade, and we decide that we need to use
Opsware to build and manage our systems.... Opsware, which only speaks
and understands RPM's....

Since our Opsware deployment went (and is still going) out in phases,
we're in an in between state, all of our developers, and all of our
build tools, rely on, and are based around DPKG's. So, for anything we
build now that gets managed through opsware, we use Alien to convert
our home built DPKG's into RPM's. So far, the same basic conversion
has worked on all of our DPKG's, and we've not run into technical
problems.

-- 
Richard Maynard