Tools/yum

yum

yum is a software package manager. It is a tool for installing, updating, and removing packages and their dependencies on RPM-based systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.

Features include:

• Support for multiple repositories
• Simple configuration
• Dependency calculation
• Fast operation
• RPM-consistent behavior
• Package group support, including multiple-repository groups
• Simple interface

yum uses an online repository by default, but you can also configure it to use a local repository of packages. For more information on yum, see http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/yum. You can also use man on a running Fedora system for basic information:

man yum

The home of the yum project is http://yum.baseurl.org/.

Is there a GUI for yum like synaptic?

Fedora uses PackageKit gui frontends as graphical package managers and update tools. You can also use Yum Extender (yumex). It can be installed if required with the following command:

yum install yumex

How is the speed of yum compared to APT-RPM?

yum automatically checks the repository every time you perform a command, except when run in shell mode, while APT only checks it when you run 'apt-get update' manually. This causes it to appear slower than it is. If you want yum to run from cache instead of checking the repositories, run 'yum -C <command>'. See the man page for details.

yum now uses sqlite for its back-end database by default. This results in an edge in speed over older versions of yum. Beginning with Fedora Core 4, yum contains significant improvements that make it faster and more capable than older versions.

What about other advanced features like those in APT that aren't available in yum?

The yum-utils package has various additional utilities that might provide you with the additional features you want. Seth Vidal has a blog post explaining the various tools available in it.

NOTE
Information about APT is available from the Apt page.

Tips and Tricks

Yum halts if there is any dependency problem within the repository to be safe and doesnt perform partial updates.Use the Yum skip-broken plugin if you would like that. Refer to the draft guide for more details.

Kindly ensure that you report any dependency issues to the appropriate repository bug tracker or post to the relevant project list if it requires more discussions.