On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 09:40:03PM -0700, Joey Hess wrote: > Chris Fearnley wrote: > > Corel has improved alien's error handling in the rpm -> deb conversion > > process. These patches should be looked at by Debian to determine if they > > are useful as they look. I think they look very useful. Their virtue > > are given by this comment from the Corel code: > > # Get a list of file locations and check if they conflict with files already > > # installed on a Corel LINUX system. > > # The purpose of this function is to help prevent unknowing users from damaging > > # their system by installing over files that are already installed. > > I've looked at these patches extensively in the past. IMHO, they are > worthless for general use. For example, dpkg implements file conflict > checking and so on itself at deb install time, whereas the file conflict > checking in corel's alien is done at package conversion time. But the > converted package may not be installed on the machine it is built on! > In that case you need some intelligence to decide if there should be a conflicts, or depends on that package(could probably look at the output of apt-cache showpkg <package>, to get an idea of if other packages depend on the package, possibly for files like those, or if it just happens to have the same files). > > I hesitate to call this a wishlist bug because the file > > /usr/share/alien/corellinux.pm in Corel's version is covered by the > > "Corel Public License" and it may not be compatible with the GPL. > > I'm not a lawyer and whenever a vendor chooses their own licence to > > use for components of GPL software, I assume people with a lawyeristic > > personality need to check it out. Is it OK because its a library? > > I asked about this on -legal sometime this spring and got a confusing > mishmash of answers. > > -- > see shy jo > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > > -- Erik Bernhardson journey@jps.net -- It is better to remain silent and be considered a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Abraham Lincoln
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