fwd: [tomsrtbt] More "Tom doesn't like .RPM _or_ .DEB"

[Teemu Hukkanen <tjhukkan@iki.fi>]

>From tomsrtbt mailing-list

[...]
From: David Damerell <djsd100@cam.ac.uk>
To: TomsRootBootDisk Mailing list <tomsrtbt@toms.net>
Subject: [tomsrtbt] More "Tom doesn't like .RPM _or_ .DEB"
Message-Id: <E11c8u7-00055a-00@taurus.cus.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:04:23 +0100

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Tom Oehser wrote:
>Let us take .deb first.  This is basically a traditional kind of archive,
>a normal tar file, bundled with the package control information in
>_another_ tar file, and those 2 are bundled with ar.  Ar?  Ex-Cuse me,

My curiousity about this has been tickled once too often. I've mailed
IWJ (author of dpkg) to ask him.

[It should be noted that - while this would not be done without good
reason - the internal format of .debs is subject to change, and you
cannot rely on tools other than the supplied ones continuing to
work. Debian have only had one change, from the old 'just happened'
format to the current one, but it might happen again.]

-- 
David Damerell, Computer Officer, Department of Chemistry, Cambridge
Work: djsd100@cam.ac.uk    Personal: damerell@chiark.greenend.org.uk

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