right way to install rpm software?
 

I am trying to install kdevelop that I downloaded from kdevelop.org. I use the command rpm -U rpmname.rpm. And I get greeted with a list of dependencies. So I try to find these rpm's and add them to the command line, these in turn introduce new dependencies, ad near infinitum. This is really, really frustrating, it's taken up to 4 hours trying to install 1 rpm and I still can't install it. So incredibly frustrating.

Is there an easier way to install software than rpm -U?

How would a linux expert go about installing kdevelop 3.0 alpha?

cheers

Rich.


oh my distro is Suse 8.0

iv always used

rpm -i <filename>

rpm -U is used to upgrade a package, not install it. the dependancies may have appeared because your trying to upgrade using -U, and not install using -i.

rpm's are well known for 'dependancy hell' mind, so have you attempted installing from source?

The previous post-er was correct, you are trying to upgrade something that's not there.

I would put all the rpms in one dir and do something like:

rpm -ihv *.rpm

This will install all the rpms in the order needed, provided you downloaded the correct dependencies. Good luck.

thanks for the replies. Unfortunately it's not exactly what I was looking for. -U option is correct by my reckoning, see the man entry below. I use this option in case I am installing over an old package, one of the things with SUSE is it installs so much 'crap' onto my system that I don't know what is there and what isn't.

rpm -U [install-options] <package_file>+

This upgrades or installs the package currently installed
to the version in the new RPM. This is the same as
install, except all other version of the package are
removed from the system.

Back to the problem, I need to find out how to go about resolving dependencies and downloading the correct rpms. I just last night spent 9 hours using something called apt-get to download about 75mb of kdevelop3 and supposed dependent packages. Well imagine my surprise when I get up this morning and see this:

Fetched 73.3MB in 9h56m1s (2051B/s)
Executing RPM (-e)...
Executing RPM (-Uvh)...
error: failed dependencies:
(null) is needed by xdevel-4.2.0-174
(null) is needed by libpng-devel-2.1.0.12-160
E: Sub-process /bin/rpm returned an error code (38)

So very frustrated, so long and such effort to install 1 piece of software.

Rich.

your best bet would be to get apt-get for suse to install a program like this that has the dependancy hell...you are correct and you can use rpm -U if you wish as it will be the same as rpm -i, so no this is not what was causing the depedancies problem...

yep I did use apt-get, it helped a lot, but it still didn't install correctly. There is a package called sp that seems to yo-yo between being installed and not being installed. If I do 'apt-get -f install' it will update this sp package, but then when I do apt-get install kdevelop3 it will again update the sp package and report breakage trying to install the rpms and tell me to do apt-get -f install to fix and so on and so on.

At least apt-get comes close to resolving the dependencies though. it's just that error in my previous post that gives me trouble. What package is <null>, why would it say that?? I tried to install just xdevel package and there seems to be a conflict between xdevel and xf86 so I'm now updating xf86 and will hopefully fix some of the problem, yet another 20MB download :-(. I am about to throw my computer out the window.

Are there any projects in the pipeline that have the potential to alleviate these rpm problems??

hey man, take a chill and don't throw the box out the window, ship it to me, i'll pay the postage. :D

the only rpm, so called apt-get package, that i know of is mandrakes urpmi. this will install all of the deps that are required for the upgrade/install.

for your problem, i guess that i would do an update db of the rpms db first. then try the apt-get install, do another updatedb, and then try the apt-get update/upgrade. i know that with my debian i have to do this sometimes. not the rpm updatedb, but get things in order before i try and update/upgrade. most people that use debian think that apt-get is the best thing in the world, i will say that it is nice, but it still has some bugs. hey it's linux, it's going to have some bugs in it. (better than windows that has lots of the critters running around though).

don't think that really helps much, but you might give it a try.

cheers.

About rpm: `rpm -U' is equivalent to `rpm -i' plus that it supports upgrading
packages in case a previous version of the packages is installed (at least that's
how things are with red hat distros). Now, about the dependencies: I see
that you are getting familiar with the term `dependency hell' and what it
means. The best way to overide it as it seems is to download `src.rpm' packages (these are a bit different than `.rpm' packages) and compile them to create '.rpm' packages suited for computer/distro. Now here is a link to
download the `.src.rpm':

ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/ftp.kde.o....0a3-0.src.rpm

login as root (`su', password ...) and `cd' to the directory where you
downloaded the package. Now just issue:

rpmbuild --rebuild kdevelop3-3.0a3-0.src.rpm

and wait for as much as it takes to have the package compiled. By the time
compilation is over you should find some rpms in:

/usr/src/SuSE/RPMS/i386 (or something)

just `cd' in this directory (being root ofcourse) and issue:

rpm -Uvh kdevelop*

That would be all I guess

Cheers,
Dominique