On Sat, May 23, 1998 at 12:14:34AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > On Sat, 23 May 1998 16:25:46 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > >The "other data" in Debian's case is stuff like dependency information, > >installation and removal scripts, and the maintainer's contact address. > > Proprietary to Debian... I am not sure what you mean "proprietary to debian" The maintainers contact adress is the adress of the person who put the package together..so if it is a debian package...then yea that only makes sense to use their adress in the context of debian. The same goes for depandancy information... > >Most of that's usually duplicated in /usr/doc/ directories, but since it's > >there and it can be useful, I think it's a good thing to let it be got at. > > To the point of requiring another program to get at the archive that the > people want? I don't think so. Well yes... debian has chosen to operate around dpkg, a packagig system. the point is to make it easy for a system administrator (even the smallest user setting up their own box can be considered the "System Administrator" of that box). The idea is that dpkg is a program which is capable of taking the "package" and checking to make sure that it meets dependancies (i.e. if the program is actually a perl script, then it wont install if perl doesn't exist) > Here is why a lot of people are looking at SLP and liking it. > > tar xzf blah.slp > > There ya go, that's it, end of story. No cpio, no ar, nothing but tar > which has been the standard for years and years, esp. in the Linux community > as a whole. SLP is an extention of that standard. Since it is compatible > with it one can, theoretically, replace TGZ with SLP. The same cannot be > said about deb and rpm. .deb format is NOT out to replace .tar.gz ...but they really are not the same thing (while internally it does use .tgz and ar etc... a .deb is really "more than the sum of its parts") In fact that is exactly how we distribute source code! there is the orrig.tar.gz a diff.gz and a text .dsc file The fact is that .tgz is great for archives (and backups... I use tar with my tape drive) but I (and many debian users) feel that dpkg makes a good packaging systemn and makes system adminitration allot easier (rpm does too, even tho most people here don't like to admit it :) ) The main problem is...as has been seen trying to convert a RPM to a .deb that certain decisions have to be made when putting a linux system together, decisions about how things work and intergrate. Even if we all just used .tgz archives and SLP, this makes the question of it moot because yes, you don't need the extra stuff you can just unpack it, but if you don't use SLP, then unpack it with .tar.gz...it is still possible that what you unpack will not intergrate well with your system In the end it is all a matter of what you want to do. Personally I like dpkg and deb files (One should hope I would, I just uploaded a new version of a package to master not even an hour ago). I like the system debian has developed. I don't really think either system is intrinsically superior to any other system, whatever works for you is what is superior to what doesnt. There really truely is no acounting for taste. I will even admit that when I heard of slackware, and everything comming as a simple tar.gz and the whole "roll your own" attitude, I liked it allot (though I never actually did try slackware) but I turned to debian and found I liked this better. For some things, yes I do want to "roll my own" and ocasionally do but, for most things, I just want to grab a package and install and have it work. (sort of "Microsoft User mentality" but...with the added bonus of it actually working) in any case, the comparison between SLP and deb files is unimportant it sounds to me like just 2 different ways to solve the same problem most systems have ar and tar and gz so really the idea of "you don't need ar and cpio" really is unimportant I don't see the huge advantage... There are a million ways to make a packaging system...is one way truely better than another? -Steve -- ** Stephen Carpenter ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** sjc@delphi.com ** "We do everything by custom, even belive by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never questioned" --Thomas Carlyle
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