I have been building C++ server applications for Linux, typically in a CentOS environment within a virtual machine. A while ago, when setting up my development environment in CentOS, I became accustomed to using Yum (with YumEx) to manage installed libraries on the CentOS system.

I am now building the application on a Debian system.

Is Yum (and YumEx) intended for use with Debian/Ubuntu, as well as CentOS? If not, what analogous package manager should I use with Debian/Ubuntu?

2 Answers

Yum was built to deal with RPM packages, as they are used e.g. with Redhat/CentOS or SuSE Linux. On Debian and its derivates (so also on Ubuntu), RPM is not the packaging system of the choice. The equivalent to Yum would be APT (as the equivalent to the rpm command would be dpkg). You might want to look up the linked references for details. Here for a short answer: Ubuntu uses a different packaging system for its software, so Yum is not a good choice to maintain an Ubuntu system.

You can use PackageKit, which is present on both distributions:

If you have minimal OS, you can install them

 yum install PackageKit

on CentOS or:

 apt-get install packagekit

on Debian.

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