6 ms·

I like it way more than apt at least. I don't have to use apt-cache, apt-get, apt-kitchensink to do what I want. Its all just subcommands of pacman. Its like vi

by zanny 11y ago

I like it way more than apt at least. I don't have to use apt-cache, apt-get, apt-kitchensink to do what I want. Its all just subcommands of pacman. Its like vim vs nano - the later has the commands in the shell, but they aren't nearly as fast or power to use as vim if you take the time to learn it. Ironically, I use nano most of the time because I'm not terminal-locked enough to get vim muscle memory, but I use pacman enough to remember everything. Zypper is actually fairly good. Still way more verbose than it needs to be, but it seems like a fair compromise between "apt-get stupidly-oversized-function-name" and "why the fuck does -Sy mean grab updated package lists from the repo".

warmwaffles 11y ago
Yes the `-Sy` bit is a bit cumbersome / annoying. I would have much preferred `pacman update -s` and `pacman remove <package>`. When I have to install a font on my machine that isn't in AUR I'll just roll up a PKGBUILD, install it and dust my hands off. Makes it incredibly easy to remove the packages later if I no longer need them.
- zanny 11y ago
  Its not cumbersome, the alternative is more cumbersome, it just requires memorization. Like I said, zypper is a great compromise, where you could do zypper update and zypper install, or you could do zypper u and zypper i. A bit more intuitive for the newbie but it doesn't make you write words like you're writing a poem in bash.
bad_user 11y ago
You can also use `aptitude`, available on both Debian and Ubuntu. It addresses your complaints and it's the first package I install.
- zanny 11y ago
  It gets so incredibly slow when you have aptitiude around apt around dpkg. Its a minor complaint, but when pacman does everything I want and is probably a tenth the codebase of either yum, zypper, dnf, or apt, then I'm content.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    I don't think aptitude is built around apt, but even so, I haven't noticed performance issues.
- mmarx 11y ago
  Since apt-1.0 (basically, since jessie), there's also apt(8), which integrates (most of) apt-get and apt-cache.
  - berdario 11y ago
    Thank you! I had no idea it existed
  - bad_user 11y ago
    Huh, I had it installed and had no idea about it. Looks good :-)
baghira 11y ago
Syntax isn't really the problem, given that one could easily write a wrapper around pacman, or apt-get, or dnf/zypper (at least for the subset of common operations supported by all). The problem with pacman as a package manager is that it simply does not have the features needed by fedora or debian. With the infrastructure given by Arch there is basically no way to have automated upgrades without potentially breaking the system. The same goes for the AUR: it's great when you know that the user is reading the script and making sure it's not malicious: it's not a model that scales for server (just like FreeBSD ports do not cut it if you have lots of machines), or if you imagine 10% of the computer running Arch (malware bonanza). Still, automating apt-get is messy (and here dnf/zypper do a better job) and building .deb packages and setting up your own repo is too complicated.
- zanny 11y ago
  Arch always posts breaking changes to its mailing list. If you are complaining about the bleeding edge part, that really has nothing to do immediately with pacman as a package manager, you could always pull a Manjaro with real package introspection to keep tabs on incoming software. The only real missing piece of pacman is that there is no distinction between a feature and security / bugfix update. But then you should be more stringent with upstream to beta test their feature releases better. Really if you wanted to automate pacman nothing stops you from creating your own custom repo as a gateway to some workstation or server cluster you have and setting it up to use your custom repo exclusively for all packages. It has delta support, does checksums, uses the best compression format available, and is a lot easier to use for custom applications than the OBS or alternative packaging tools.
  - baghira 11y ago
    To be clear: I also am an Arch user (albeit not exclusively). I'm not complaining about the bleeding edge part (from your answer I get the feeling you already had similar discussions, with people complaining "upgrade X broke my system"). What i was driving at is the fact that pacman, as it is, does not cover the whole use case of other distros. Would you take debian, with its three branches, and move it to pacman? No, because the lack of pinning and differentiation between security upgrates and normal upgrades would wreak havoc ("get a better upstream" is a nice suggestion, but an unpractical one). The same could be said for Fedora (actually, for Red Hat, but Fedora is Red Hat testbed after all). I could set up my own repository, clearly, it may very well be a good solution, but to me that is not automation anymore. Similarly, there is nothing preventing one from setting up one's own repo of old packages, and reinstalling those. Still, I see the value in having the rollback features inside DNF (call it laziness, if you wish). I guess my comment came out as random pissing on Arch, when what I wanted to point out was that other distros simply have different needs.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/apt-wrapper https://pypi.python.org/pypi/apt-wrapper

by zanny 11y ago

warmwaffles 11y ago

Yes the `-Sy` bit is a bit cumbersome / annoying. I would have much preferred `pacman update -s` and `pacman remove <package>`. When I have to install a font on my machine that isn't in AUR I'll just roll up a PKGBUILD, install it and dust my hands off. Makes it incredibly easy to remove the packages later if I no longer need them.

zanny 11y ago
Its not cumbersome, the alternative is more cumbersome, it just requires memorization. Like I said, zypper is a great compromise, where you could do zypper update and zypper install, or you could do zypper u and zypper i. A bit more intuitive for the newbie but it doesn't make you write words like you're writing a poem in bash.

bad_user 11y ago

You can also use `aptitude`, available on both Debian and Ubuntu. It addresses your complaints and it's the first package I install.

zanny 11y ago
It gets so incredibly slow when you have aptitiude around apt around dpkg. Its a minor complaint, but when pacman does everything I want and is probably a tenth the codebase of either yum, zypper, dnf, or apt, then I'm content.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I don't think aptitude is built around apt, but even so, I haven't noticed performance issues.
mmarx 11y ago
Since apt-1.0 (basically, since jessie), there's also apt(8), which integrates (most of) apt-get and apt-cache.
- berdario 11y ago
  Thank you! I had no idea it existed
- bad_user 11y ago
  Huh, I had it installed and had no idea about it. Looks good :-)

baghira 11y ago

Syntax isn't really the problem, given that one could easily write a wrapper around pacman, or apt-get, or dnf/zypper (at least for the subset of common operations supported by all). The problem with pacman as a package manager is that it simply does not have the features needed by fedora or debian. With the infrastructure given by Arch there is basically no way to have automated upgrades without potentially breaking the system. The same goes for the AUR: it's great when you know that the user is reading the script and making sure it's not malicious: it's not a model that scales for server (just like FreeBSD ports do not cut it if you have lots of machines), or if you imagine 10% of the computer running Arch (malware bonanza). Still, automating apt-get is messy (and here dnf/zypper do a better job) and building .deb packages and setting up your own repo is too complicated.

zanny 11y ago
Arch always posts breaking changes to its mailing list. If you are complaining about the bleeding edge part, that really has nothing to do immediately with pacman as a package manager, you could always pull a Manjaro with real package introspection to keep tabs on incoming software. The only real missing piece of pacman is that there is no distinction between a feature and security / bugfix update. But then you should be more stringent with upstream to beta test their feature releases better. Really if you wanted to automate pacman nothing stops you from creating your own custom repo as a gateway to some workstation or server cluster you have and setting it up to use your custom repo exclusively for all packages. It has delta support, does checksums, uses the best compression format available, and is a lot easier to use for custom applications than the OBS or alternative packaging tools.
- baghira 11y ago
  To be clear: I also am an Arch user (albeit not exclusively). I'm not complaining about the bleeding edge part (from your answer I get the feeling you already had similar discussions, with people complaining "upgrade X broke my system"). What i was driving at is the fact that pacman, as it is, does not cover the whole use case of other distros. Would you take debian, with its three branches, and move it to pacman? No, because the lack of pinning and differentiation between security upgrates and normal upgrades would wreak havoc ("get a better upstream" is a nice suggestion, but an unpractical one). The same could be said for Fedora (actually, for Red Hat, but Fedora is Red Hat testbed after all). I could set up my own repository, clearly, it may very well be a good solution, but to me that is not automation anymore. Similarly, there is nothing preventing one from setting up one's own repo of old packages, and reinstalling those. Still, I see the value in having the rollback features inside DNF (call it laziness, if you wish). I guess my comment came out as random pissing on Arch, when what I wanted to point out was that other distros simply have different needs.

mixmastamyk 11y ago

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/apt-wrapper https://pypi.python.org/pypi/apt-wrapper