Re: [fmII] Project comment added

Mike...

Here is the story. I began working on GRAB over a year ago, and I did so
because when I changed employers, I was forced to also change distributions
(from Debian to RedHat). I was able to adapt well to RedHat except for the
lack of Apt.

At the time, I could not find any projects that would do what Apt did for
RPMS, so I created my own. I built GRAB to work in a similar fashion to Apt,
but I wanted to be easier to use (for the newbie), and not rely on specific
Apt repositories (rather any FTP server). When Apt was finally ported, I
took a look at the code, and I actually started hacking on it. I am part of
their mailing list (although I am primarily a lurker), but honestly the code
is enormous. It would have taken me too long to learn the code base to feel
really comfortable making significant mods to it. Also, when I announced on the
GRAB mailing list that the Apt project is finally moving to RPM, (with one
exception), everyone asked me to continue development on GRAB because it is
easier to use, and more functional. I honestly tried arguing the fact that the
deps are better handled in Apt (because of the repositories), but was still
asked to continue development.

I put 90& of my effort into Apt, and pretty much was only fixing bugs in GRAB.
I created repositories, and rebuilt all of the Apt RPMS for many OS's. I used
it in place of GRAB everywhere I could. IT was not long before I missed some
of the functionality of GRAB (i.e. searching for RPMS, and ease of use). I
started using GRAB again, but then I did not like that it was less robust then
Apt. I did everything that I could to make GRAB as robust as possible.

Today, I use both because they are both good at different things. GRAB has
matured into an application that may look a bit like Apt, but is usefully for
different things (i.e. also utilizing the RPMFind database to grab packages).

There is an anomaly of development of opensource code. It has to do with all
of the focus being with the largest, most well known or _cool_ project out
there. A lot of the other great ideas get lost because of lack of community
support (i.e. Sendmail, Apache, WU-FTPD, etc...). These packages may not be
the best, but they are historically the leaders and the community pays less
attention to the "less well known" apps. I don't want to stop development on
GRAB simply because there is a bigger, more well known app out there. GRAB may
have similar functionality, but it also does other things that Apt has no
future plans of doing. It is also easier to use for newbies. 

I appreciate your comments, but I don't see myself stopping development on
GRAB, to work on Apt. Again, I want to say how great I think Apt is, and I
don't EVER want to talk it down. I just believe that GRAB works as well, and
fills certain voids that Apt leaves behind. BTW, I have approx 15,000
downloads of GRAB, (most from GRAB updating itself by users running it from
CRON).

If you have any questions with this VERY LENGTHY E-mail, please feel free to
ask. I appreciate all comments for users and members of the community. 

Greg

On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 12:32:43PM -0500, [email protected] wrote:
> Hi Greg Kurtzer,
> 
> Michael Shigorin just added a comment to your project
> GRAB. Here's what s/he wrote:
> 
> Subject: Re: apt-get for rpm already exists
> Date: 2002-02-16 12:32:43
> Body:
> 
> Yes; it's being developed by Conectiva and also in use in our distribution.  It _works_.
> 
> Greg, maybe join APT-RPM project? Maybe you could spend your effort far more efficiently having such base as apt and quite strong development already going :-)
> 
> That way we would less end up in half-finished software (not to blame you, rather myself ;-)
> 
> 
> This comment is available for viewing at:
> http://freshmeat.net/projects/grab/#comment-13450
> 
> Regards,
> freshmeat.net

-- 
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------
   | Greg M. Kurtzer, CSE: Linux specialist                                |
   | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory                                 |   
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------
:wq