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From: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
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Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:57:31 +0000
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Cc: Poky <poky@lists.pokylinux.org>
Subject: Re: RPM vs IPK
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On Sun, 2011-03-20 at 19:58 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
> I know that historically Poky has used 'ipk' as the primary packaging
> mechanism.  It seems that now Poky/Yocto has move to 'rpm'.  My distribution
> is still using ipk, but I'm happy to change, given a good argument.
> 
> * Is there such [a good reason] to use rpm over ipk?
> * What are the pros and cons?  I'm mostly interested in very resource limited
>    deeply embedded systems which often only run from FLASH.
> 
> Thanks for any comments

My advice is that for such a resource limited system, you're probably
best of sticking to ipk, particularly if you have it working already.

opkg:

* Has a smaller disk footprint
* Is generally faster than rpm

rpm+zypper:

* More of an industry standard
* Emphasises correctness and robustness over speed (e.g. number of 
  fsync calls)
* Has desktop/enterprise features
* Not optimised for size (e.g. uses c++)

I'd not say one was better than the other, they're just different and
suit different use cases.

Cheers,

Richard