Re: The project
On Mon, Jul 19, 1999 at 11:41:14AM -0700, Brent Fulgham wrote:
> 3. If it is determined that having the raw source is very desirable for
> certain packages, it should be possible to use the dpkg-source tool as a
> basis for dpkg to handle the install and build of packages. Our
> autobuilders (at Debian) do this already.
I think that recent versions of apt can install source packages, too.
I don't know how it works, and I haven't tried it.
For the benefit on non-Debian folks: dpkg just knows how to install,
manipulate, and remove .deb packages. It doesn't know how to download them,
and it isn't very intelligent about installing them in the correct order.
There's a front-end gui called dselect (a subset of sysinstall perhaps)
which has plugins (called methods) for obtaining .deb files -- from FTP
sites, HTTP sites, CD-ROM, local disk, NFS etc.
apt is a new command-line tool which also has plugin methods. It knows
how to obtain packages by HTTP, FTP etc and how to install them in the
correct order. It calls dpkg to do the actual work. Eventually, there will
be a GUI front-end to apt, to replace dselect.
(To confuse the issue further, apt can be used as a method (plug-in)
to dselect).
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB (ex-VK3TYD).
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