Forcing RPM install
 

Disclaimer/
sorry if this is a faq.. I was interested in this because I'm trying to get my DVD running, so I tried searching on DVD, and on RPM, and some other things.. but got the beautiful "The search term you specified (rpm) is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer." message.. I wonder if the site maintainer might look into that considering how many commands in linux are under that word length.
/Disclaimer

To the meat: How much success have people had with forcing RPM installs? what are the downsides? I'm trying to break out of RPM hell.. i.e.:

Want to install package A..

A failed, needs B.stuff
rpmfind B from B.stuff
rpm -ivh B
B needs C.stuff and D.stuff
rpmfind C from C.stuff; D from D.stuff
rpm -ivh C D
C conflicts with C.9
D needs E and F
rpm -U C
blah blah requires C.9 (older version)
continue ad infintem as near as I can tell..

I feel like I'm pulling on a thread and my whole suit is falling apart!
so say I just force B to get the one little B.stuff thingy I need.. or is that asking for a whole other world of pain???

The packages involved are videolan client and it's associated X rpms.. my latest distro of choice for playing with is the ubiquitous MDL8.0

ugh.. I wonder if apt-get is better about this..

anyway, your experiences/warnings related to forcing RPM installs would be appreciated..

Thanks,
James

forcing is a very bad thing, get a tar.gz. version of the prog. and do the ./configure, make, make install routine. you may need to add libraries if you get errors , but you probably already have them on the distro.disks somewhere

apt-get is much better at this but then you would be running debian, and thats a whole other world of pain:p

Alright.. I assume I'd have to use some round-about tool, like "rpm-get" or "rpm2cpio {FullNameOfRPM} | cpio -iumd {FullNameOfFileToExtract} " kind of trick, or does rpm actually have the option of taking out single files somewhere? (didn't see it in the man)

thanks for the response!