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Re: OT : Universal Packaging



On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 05:41:30PM +0100, Joris Lambrecht wrote:
> - I'm not a member of the list so please include me in any reply's, can't
> afford yet another storm of mails, allready subscribed to 4 lists -

Only 4?

> Now i wonder if future packages would be created using XML and thus
> distributed, the packages would be parsed/processed by some tool at the
> client side wich in turn would convert it to any required package format
> necessary or even simply interpret this for an existing package manager.

Man I'm getting sick of XML.  Just because something's done in XML
doesn't mean it's immediately and automatically interchangeable between
systems.  There are plenty of proprietary DTDs out there.  XML merely
parsing text easy.  The thing is, Debian's control files already
follow a well defined format, so changing them to XML won't gain you
anything.  They're already easy to parse.

We've already got tools (alien) that can parse Debian and Redhat control 
info and convert between package formats.  The ability to convert
between formats is already there.  Naturally this doesn't mean that
Redhat (or Mandrake or whoever) could just magically merge into a single
distribution, but why would they need to?  What's included in, for
example, Redhat that isn't included in Debian?

noah

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