Re: Help on installing a package on Non-Debian Linux system
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On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 10:11:39AM -0600, Julie R. Clausen wrote:
> I would like to install the gnucap project on my laptop. I have SuSe
> Linux and don't know how to unzip the .deb file. Can you help??
A .deb file is an ar archive containing three members:
* debian-binary, a version number which you can ignore for your
purpose;
* control.tar.gz, which contains metadata such as dependencies and
post-installation scripts;
* data.tar.gz, which is a filesystem archive that dpkg unpacks in /.
To install from the .deb on a non-Debian system, you'll need to do
something like 'mkdir tmp; cd tmp; ar x whateveritis.deb; tar -xzvf
data.tar.gz', and then copy the resulting files to the right place on
your system. If there are 'preinst' or 'postinst' files in
control.tar.gz then you may want to look at them and manually do some of
the things they would do.
All that said, however, it's likely to be easier for you to use the
standard upstream package rather than the one customized for Debian.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnucap/ has download links. It doesn't seem
to need anything unusual to build - just standard C and C++ development
libraries, plus ncurses and readline development.
Regards,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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