Re: Packages
I would like to make a comment or two about packages, from the
user's perspective.
On Wed, 14 Feb 1996 wendal@onyx.southwind.net wrote:
> You can also use the
> info to create a package any software you wish to be able to manage using
> the debian system.
This is one of the things that at first put me off of debian: the
necessity of having packages in some arbitrary format. With
Slackware, I was actually pleased to learn that the tar file format is
a standard on Unix archives, and I readily learned to import any other
software or source code I might find, not to mention that I didn't
need to have "pkgtool" to install it on my debian system. The
"pkgtool" utility wouldn't log, of course, such non-Slackware packages.
A possible suggestion would be to have some kind of procedure to log in
packages that are not in the .deb format, say a tared packaged like
Slackware's. I have just installed emacs 19.30 from slackware, which
seems ok, but I will have to take extra care (and explain to others
who are responsible for this machine) when upgrading to a debian
package.
dpkg is a pleasure to use on .deb packages; it would be wonderful if
it were able to log in non-debian packages, and, likewise, if debian packages
could be exported. On the first, maybe a script would enable me to package up a tar file, add comments?
Comments, like fallen leaves on the surface of a river... .02 worth.
Alan Davis
Reply to: