Re: would be a wishlist bug against alien, but ...
Hi everyone!
I think that Joey is right, (although a little harsh) this enhancement to Alien was
designed as an assistant to package management UI's. We use Alien in CorelUpdate to
help install RPM's. This addition to Alien was a nice way for CorelUpdate to monitor
the conversion process and graphically warn the user of potential/real problems
before the actual installation took place.
The alien (6.59-cl-1.2) patch is just an enhancement that speeds up the checking
process considerably. What used to possibly take a long time now takes seconds!
Thanks for noticing Chris, that was very nice of you!! :)
Talk to you later!
Fred.
Joey Hess wrote:
> Chris Fearnley wrote:
> > 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've looked at these patches extensively in the past. IMHO, they are
> worthless for general use. For example, dpkg implements file conflict
> checking and so on itself at deb install time, whereas the file conflict
> checking in corel's alien is done at package conversion time. But the
> converted package may not be installed on the machine it is built on!
>
> > 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?
>
> I asked about this on -legal sometime this spring and got a confusing
> mishmash of answers.
>
> --
> see shy jo
--
Fred Harju <fredh@corel.com>
Software Developer
Corel Corporation
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