Zypper versus Smart

17 Replies to “Zypper versus Smart”

• Not only that smart’s dependency resolution is better, the Suse stuff is also unbelievably slow. IMHO they should dump this zypp crap and switch completely to SMART.

• Heh. Well, I don’t claim to know the first thing about the internals of smart or zypp, but I have always been very impressed with smart and smart –gui. Really nice and fast. I miss not being able to install source rpms from smart, but that only hits me once in a very great while.

  Also, it’s very well possible that I don’t have something set up correctly for zypp to be giving me the shown conflict, but… I kinda doubt it….

• Not really sure about the Java issue, but ZYpp really is the future: http://duncan.mac-vicar.com/blog/archives/296

• What did smart do when installing the java 1.5 plugin?

• There is current development on a replacement for zypp. You’ll be able to preview it in OpenSuSE 11 Alpha 3 on March 18.

  Final O’Suse 11 will be released on June 19. Hang in there for now 🙂

• As Bille asks: What did Smart do? Did it no the a problem, did it solved the problem or did it ignore it?

  ps. See the Zypper-video 😀

• Hi Bille and BartOtten! =:)

  Well, I’m not sure what it did behind the scenes, but it installed them both fine. I have both rpms installed and the list of files they provide don’t conflict:

  rpm -ql java-1_6_0-sun-plugin-1.6.0.u4-0.1
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_jni.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp_gcc29.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/it/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/ko.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/ko/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/zh.GBK/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/zh/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/zh_HK.BIG5HK/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/zh_TW.BIG5/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/lib/plugin.jar
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/desktop
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/desktop/sun_java.desktop
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/desktop/sun_java.png
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/i386
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/i386/ns7
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29/libjavaplugin_oji.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.u4-sun-1.6.0.u4/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
  /usr/share/applications/jpackage-java-1_6_0-sun-ControlPanel.desktop

  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_jni.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/i386/libjavaplugin_nscp_gcc29.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/it/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/ko.UTF-8/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/ko/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/zh.GBK/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/zh/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/zh_HK.BIG5HK/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/zh_TW.BIG5/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/locale/zh_TW/LC_MESSAGES/sunw_java_plugin.mo
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/lib/plugin.jar
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/desktop
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/desktop/sun_java.desktop
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/desktop/sun_java.png
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/i386
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/i386/ns7
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/i386/ns7-gcc29/libjavaplugin_oji.so
  /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_update14/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
  /usr/share/applications/jpackage-java-1_5_0-sun-ControlPanel.desktop

• The zypper video only shows that Michael Schröder’ solver is faster. We still need to see if it makes *correct* dependency resolutions.

  About how Smart solved the problem… libzypp is able to complain about dependency problems that don’t exist at all. So it is possible that Smart just didn’t need to solve anything.

  But the worst problem with zypper isn’t that it s slow or that it creates imaginary dependency problems. The worst thing about zypper is how it explains the problems!!! Do you really think it is an easy read? Sometimes it doesn’t makes any sense at all.

  Anyway I see that a lot of problems that libzypp has are with patch/delta RPMs, that Smart ignores. In this case we also have one of these “atom:”.

• This is a good example of “worse is better’. No matter how architecturally elegant Zypper is, if the user experience it provides is not better than Smart, it’s DOA. There’s no future if it doesn’t work *now*.

• Hey Antonio! =:D

  Heh. I’ll withhold judgement on the life of Zypper. =:) SUSE has some of the best and brightest working for them, so I have no doubt that they’ll improve things.

  I personally still like apt best, but I guess there’s some problems with it on 32/64-bit or cross-platform or something.

• I use Apt on 64-bit Ubuntu and it works fine.

• It must be cross-platform then… i.e Sparc/S390/etc…

• i don’t know about you but when i get trapped in my zypper, i smart for days.

  sorry, just trying to be apt…

• You should have used this command line option in zypper:

  zypper update -t package

  to update the packages. The update ‘lonely’ option is for patchs only…

• Hi @ElCheVive,

  Okay, well that’s helpful information, certainly. Thank you.

• Hi Jason,
  If I’m correct the problem is that browsers (mozilla) don’t support 64 bit plugins. So to use a 32-bit plugin you need ‘nspluginwrapper’. Zypper (and Yast) complains because it detects an architecture change (a 32bit plugin for an x64 (java)installation).

  I don’t know if zypper is too “sensitive”. Yast and zypper might not be the fastest kids on the block, but I really hate an updater which corrups my system very fast 🙂

• Correction.
  I guess that stating browsers don’t support 64 bit plugins is not quite correct. Firefox doesn’t support a 64 bit java_sun_plugin, because sun doesn’t make a 64bit java plugin. (see: http://en.opensuse.org/How_To_use_Java_with_Firefox_on_64-bit_openSuSE_10.3 for Novell’s solution)

  BTW checking your original message I guess you don’t use a x64. Your problem was that you can’t install 1.5 and 1.6 plugins at the same time

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