On Fri, May 22, 1998 at 09:52:51PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> On Sat, 23 May 1998 14:10:40 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> >(Oh, and the nice thing about having an ar of two tar's rather than a
> >tar with some extra stuff tacked on the end is that you can get to *all*
> >the information in the former with standard tools, whereas the latter
> >requires you to whip out the ol' C compiler if you don't have the
> >appropriate packager handy)
> If you don't have the packager, who cares about the other data?
The "other data" in Debian's case is stuff like dependency information,
installation and removal scripts, and the maintainer's contact address.
(That's more or less enough information to tell you what other programs
you need to already have installed, anything special that you might have
to take care of beyond just untar'ing it, and someone to email if you
run into problems)
(for actual debian systems, using "dpkg --print-avail [pkg]" and looking
at /var/lib/dpkg/info/pkg.* will get you at the same info for installed
packages, btw)
Most of that's usually duplicated in /usr/doc/ directories, but since it's
there and it can be useful, I think it's a good thing to let it be got at.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``It's not a vision, or a fear. It's just a thought.''
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