Re: netpbm vs. pbmplus

[Raul Miller <rdm@tad.micro.umn.edu>]

Chris Fearnley:
   Didn't you see my example of the Slackware sysadmin who would
   rather ftp /usr/bin/netpbm.tar from a Debian box rather than
   recompile from source?  Organized subdirectories make many things
   easier, add flexibility, and make the system easier to explore.

It's asking a lot for debian packages to be organized in a way that
makes it easier to upgrade Slackware systems that don't want to use
debian tools.

   Perhaps not for you.  But I want (and sometimes I NEED) to explore
   what's going on and I find using the shell tools to be
   indispensable (e.g., ls | wc -l to find out how many binaries are
   in the netpbm package without writing some bloody script to parse
   dpkg -L output).  Your convenience (not having to touch PATH),
   could easily become my nightmare.  It is compelling to me!

How about
   dpkg -L netpbm | grep /usr/bin | wc -l
?


Note that this works for all packages, not just netpbm.

I agree that this is a bit more typing than
   cd /usr/bin/netpbm; ls | wc -l
but the added generality is probably a good thing.

   Another example: I might decide I want all the man pages for netpbm
   on my system, but I want to delete all the binaries (perhaps I have
   the binaries on another system, but that system doesn't have my
   favorite man page browser).  rm -rf /usr/bin/netbpm solves the
   problem.  How would you accomplish this in one line of sh if
   everything is in /usr/bin?

dpkg -L netpbm | grep /usr/bin | xargs rm -f

   The advantage of my approach is long-term flexibility.  The
   disadvantage is a small bother for those users/admins that need
   nonstandard *nix extensions like netpbm.

As near as I can see, dpkg is far more flexible at package management
than directories under /usr/bin/.

-- 
Raul