Man And Man-db Inconsitency
Folks
I use “yum list installed” to determine if a package has been installed. In particular, I was interested in the “man” program, installed with the command “yum install man”.
In CentOS6, if I look at the results, I see that “man” was installed. This is good. In CentOS7, if I look at the results, I see that “man-db” was installed. This is inconsistent.
The result is that the generic algorithm:
if I want package X , check the “yum list installed” output.
If X is not listed, install it, otherwise assume it’s already installed.
Is there a reason for this inconsistency? The above algorithm works with most other packages.
David
2 thoughts on - Man And Man-db Inconsitency
what ‘algorithm’ ? there’s no fixed correlation between program name and package name.
for example, the package providing ‘iostat’ and ‘sar’ is called sysstat.
And, some packages change their names in different major releases of an OS. Some packages are dropped entirely in new releases, and other packages are added.
You might see this as an inconsistency at the command->package mapping level, but it’s a consistency/compatibility at the user/system level. Can you imagine having to go through and change every script, program and user’s memory every time a package name changed?
Look at /etc/alternatives and the symbolic links in /bin and /sbin for a range of remappings.
It has been a long time since one looked for a “csh” binary, even if that’s the shell in someone’s passwd file entry that has been brought forward from an older system. Then there’s sendmail->postfix. And, if you want a database, you still enter
“mysql”, but now get mariadb.