Software management
In the old days, installing software was a matter of extracting an archive to a filesystem. There are several problems with this approach:
- It's difficult to remove the software if the files are copied into directories that are also used by other software
- It's difficult to upgrade software; maybe the files are still in use, or they are renamed for whatever reason
- It's difficult to handle shared libraries
That's why Linux distributions invented software managers.
The RPM software manager
In 1997, Red Hat released the first version of their package manager, RPM. Other distributions such as SUSE adopted this package manager. RPM is the name of the utility rpm, as well as the name of the format and the filename extension.
The RPM package contains the following:
- A CPIO archive
- Metadata with information about the software, such as a description and dependencies
- Scriptlets for pre- and post-installation scripts
In the past, Linux administrators used the rpm utility to install/update and...
