would be a wishlist bug against alien, but ...
Package: alien
Version: 6.54
Severity: Wishlist
This isn't actually a bug because incorporating this suggestion may not
be possible.
Corel has improved alien's error handling in the rpm -> deb conversion
process. These patches should be looked at by Debian to determine if they
are useful as they look. I think they look very useful. Their virtue
are given by this comment from the Corel code:
# Get a list of file locations and check if they conflict with files already
# installed on a Corel LINUX system.
# The purpose of this function is to help prevent unknowing users from damaging
# their system by installing over files that are already installed.
I hesitate to call this a wishlist bug because the file
/usr/share/alien/corellinux.pm in Corel's version is covered by the
"Corel Public License" and it may not be compatible with the GPL.
I'm not a lawyer and whenever a vendor chooses their own licence to
use for components of GPL software, I assume people with a lawyeristic
personality need to check it out. Is it OK because its a library?
To save bandwidth and facilitate review of Corel's contribution, I placed
a patch to go from the stock potato version of alien to the Corel Linux
1.1 version at http://www.CJFearnley.com/pads/alien/alien-6.54.patch.gz
Corel's latest version (Corel Linux 1.2) is at
ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/linux/CorelLinux/source/corellinux-1.2/corel/alien_6.59-cl-1.2.dsc
ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/linux/CorelLinux/source/corellinux-1.2/corel/alien_6.59-cl-1.2.tar.gz
Which includes this improvement (?):
alien (6.59-cl-1.2) unstable; urgency=low
* Added a high speed file cache to replace dpkg -S calls to
speed up conflict and dependency checks.
-- Fred Harju <fredh@corel.com> Thu, 15 Jun 2000 11:06:05 -0500
--
Christopher J. Fearnley | LinuxForce Inc.
cjf@LinuxForce.net | Chief Technology Officer
http://www.LinuxForce.net | Design Science Revolutionary
"Dare to be Naïve" -- Bucky Fuller
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