RE: [OT] Scripts, packages, etc.

Nicholas E. Walker wrote:
>Whereas with dpkg and RPM, one must remove the known-stable package and
>perhaps some of its dependencies and install the perhaps-unstable new
>version and its perhaps-unstable dependencies.

That's not actually a property of the package manager,
it's a property of whether the software in question
tolerates multiple simultaneous installed versions.
The 'alternatives' paradigm (from Debian?) suggests
that programs should be installed with version numbers
in the name; then symlinks can be used to set the 
system defaults, and if a program absolutely depends
on a particular version of another program, it can
refer to that version explicitly.

Both Red Hat and Debian ship some packages that
follow this convention and thus escape the problem
you raise, I think.

- Dan