Re: 1.2 source archive and packaging issues
On Wed, 19 Jun 1996, Chris Fearnley wrote:
> But I like that the Debian source packages
> can be untarred by anyone without dpkg and/or rpm installed.
I also think that's important. The source packages should be very
simple, and the source unpacker/packer should be written in a scripting
language.
>From what I've gathered, the rpm format for sources is basically lines
of text giving control information, followed by a cpio of all the
gzipped tars. The control field gives commands to do things like
unpack, build, etc.
Because we already mandate commands for debian.rules, such complexity
is not needed. This program (dsource?) would know that it just needs
to run "debian.rules build" to build, "debian.rules dist" for a
distribution, etc. The only information in the control field is how to
unpack.
Guy
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