Packages
From Mandriva Community Wiki
Contents |
What is a package?
Mandriva packages are archives (collections of files) that depend on each other (can not be installed without installing the others). Mandriva uses the RPM package manager from RedHat, another Linux distribution that Mandriva was originally based on. These two distributions have become less and less compatible with each other over time and installing a Redhat RPM on Mandriva is likely to fail.
A package is designed to be installed on a system with an architecture and version of a specific distribution. Sources (meaning the source code) of software, by contrast, have no such constraints and can be installed on all platforms, but they require compilation, which is a sometimes long and tedious process and can sometimes fail because it is difficult for developers to provide for all the scenarios on all the platforms that exist.
Making a package is called "packaging" and you will find more information about packaging on this page.
Metapackages
Mandriva Linux uses a concept called meta-packages for easy installation of large groups of packages. For example, it is very common for users who only initially install the KDE desktop environment to try the GNOME desktop environment as well. GNOME is made up of dozens of packages and finding and installing them all separately would be tedious. The use of meta-packages makes this installation easy. A meta-package is simply a package that contains no files but requires the installation of a group of other packages so that when you install the meta-package, all other packages will be installed at the same time. To install the GNOME graphical environment on a complete Mandriva Linux system, you can simply install the package gnome-task and all necessary packages will be installed. Most meta-packages in Mandriva Linux have names beginning with task to make them easy to find and identify.
Metapackages list
- In 2007 Spring :
- Repository : main:
- 3ddesktop task: install all 3D desktops (Metisse Beryl and Compiz)
- Task-gnome: install the complete GNOME desktop environment
- Task-gnome-minimal: install the minimum GNOME desktop environment
- Kde task: install the KDE desktop environment
- Task-kde-devel: install the libraries required to compile KDE programs
- Printing-task: install the packages required to manage printing under Mandriva Linux
- Task-printing-scanning: installs the package printing and scanning
- Task-x11: install the X server
- Repository : (contrib :
- Task-beryl: install beryl and its plugins
- Task-c + +-devel: install the necessary steps to develop in C + +
- Task-c-devel: install the necessary steps to develop and compile C (a lot of software including the Linux kernel, are written in C)
- Task-games: install a set of the best Linux games
- Xfce-task: install the Xfce desktop environment complete
- Task-xfce-minimal: install the Xfce desktop environment minimum
- Repository : main:
