Number of packages

Story: Installing sbopkg with Slackware 14.1Total Replies: 5
Author Content
richarson

Jan 17, 2016
2:42 PM EDT
Just to point out that in Slackware one binary package usually contains everything said package provides, but in other distros one source package is divided in several sub-packages so comparing binary packages is a little unfair.

For example, in Slackware you have exaclty one package for python, in CentOS 7 one python source package becomes 7 binary packages.

But yes, in general Slackware tends to be in the 'fewer packages' category of distros.
jdixon

Jan 17, 2016
8:04 PM EDT
> in Slackware one binary package usually contains everything said package provides, but in other distros one source package is divided in several sub-packages so comparing binary packages is a little unfair.

Yes. And what is this _dev package other distro's keep talking about? :)
penguinist

Jan 17, 2016
8:36 PM EDT
Fedora/CentOS/RHEL use the naming convention:

package_name.rpm # for the binary

package_name-devel.rpm # for the build environment. i.e. - all the .h header files that are required if you need to build against this package

package_name.src.rpm # for the full source
jdixon

Jan 17, 2016
9:05 PM EDT
> ...package_name-devel.rpm # for the build environment. i.e. - all the .h header files that are required if you need to build against this package

Yes, so does Debian, though I don't think they use the same naming convention. Slackware doesn't do that.
gus3

Jan 18, 2016
4:40 PM EDT
I will call point left to Debian/RH for separating the -devel packages, which made sense for embedded development. Given that flash-friendly storage is still a work in progress, minimizing filesystem pollution from lots of /usr/include/*.h can be advisable.

But that's the only advantage that comes to mind.
richarson

Jan 19, 2016
1:17 PM EDT
> I will call point left to Debian/RH for separating the -devel packages, which made sense for embedded development

Yes, and Debian goes to even greater lenghts to split a source package (foo, libfoo, libfoo-bin, foo-dev, libfoo-dev, foo-doc, etc) which is specially nice to make a really tiny installation.

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