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Adams-Blake Co. <atakeoutcanton@adams-blaketakeout.com> is thought
to have typed the following text on 2003-10-24:

> Would one of you who are more experienced in Slackware explain to the rest
> of us the difference between:
>
> pkgtool
> slapt-get
> swaret
>
> Choice is good, but is there a clear "winner" here? Will there be a
> "standard?" (Yeah, I know, Slack people march to their own "tune.")
>
There is a "standard", pkgtool it's the only official tool of the
three. slapt-get and swaret are both 3rd=party software.

- --
Bartosz Oudekerk

Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures
and kill them.
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On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 13:30:35 +0100, James Telfer wrote:

>> Fred Emmott
> Not thought of that (or indeed realised that was where the package data was
> stored).
>
> It does allow searching for available yet not installed packages though,
> unless there is once again a simpler (better?) way of doing that too?

Hello
I suppose there will always be the hard console camp vs the gooey camp
and hopefully I fall somewhere in between where I attempt to use tools
appropriate to the job. In the case of packages, which I almost never use
directly since I compile from source and have "checkinstall" create a
package. Having been asked "why bother to effectively do both when you
could just do one" this thread seems a good place to answer.

If one installs with "make install" there is no package involved. By
using "checkinstall" which installs from source and then essentially
re-installs as a package, all packaging tools are available for every so
installed application. I've not used swaret but AFAIK it is essentially a
dpkg clone for slack. While debian's dpkg is IMHO vastly superior to RPM
( so swaret might be at least useful in Slack for those unconcerned with
the details of installing applications ) whatever tools you use, pkgtool,
rpm, etc *all* of them can be organized in KDE's KPackage. Here I'll
point out that if all I want to do involves a single package then pkgtool
is just fine, but when someone wishes to deal with many packages at once,
the gooey tool KPackage is very useful, especially to those who prefer GUI
but even to those such as I who use both. In KPackage, one can view what
is installed, what is available ( updated from whatever mirror you like )
search for either installed or newly avilable packages and even see a file
list of all the files and their paths. Because KPackage works with all
package tools it is especially useful to those who run more than one
distro or who may have for example Slack at home and Red Hat, SuSe. or
whatever at work or at a friends. Thus KPackage can bring a consistency to
any linux as well as operate as a "homebase" center when dealing with
large numbers of packages.

So it might be worthwhile for people new to Slack to learn pkgtool while
keeping KPackage open to see the "big picture" and help make sense of
what's really going on, and get a feel for when CLI is sufficient and when
it is best to resort to a GUI tool.

Jimmy

Jimmy wrote:
> So it might be worthwhile for people new to Slack to learn pkgtool while
> keeping KPackage open to see the "big picture" and help make sense of
> what's really going on, and get a feel for when CLI is sufficient and when
> it is best to resort to a GUI tool.
>
> Jimmy
A sound idea, but probably not practical on my 486 that's running slack:-)
--
James