Converting rpm to deb with alien loses dependencies

[Fraser Campbell <fraser@wehave.net>]

Hi,

I'm hoping to convert an rpm package to a deb using alien in an automated 
process on a redhat machine.  I've installed alien (8.43), dpkg (1.10.18) and 
debhelper (4.1.89) on the redhat machine from source.

The issue I'm having is that the converted packages lose the dependencies that 
were defined in the rpm:

	fraser@newsol% rpm -qpR ~/tmp/sav-3.77-1.i386.rpm
	/u/ws/sol/fraser/p4/private
	sav-updates = 3.77
	/bin/sh
	/bin/sh
	rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
	rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
	ld-linux.so.2
	libc.so.6
	libsavi.so.3
	/bin/sh

	fraser@newsol% dpkg -I /tmp/sav_3.77-1_i386.deb
	 new debian package, version 2.0.
	 size 5985598 bytes: control archive= 2205 bytes.
	     116 bytes,     5 lines      conffiles
	     338 bytes,    12 lines      control
	    3539 bytes,    55 lines      md5sums
	     135 bytes,     7 lines   *  postinst             #!/bin/sh
	     132 bytes,     7 lines   *  postrm               #!/bin/sh
	      14 bytes,     1 lines      shlibs
	 Package: sav
	 Version: 3.77-1
	 Section: alien
	 Priority: extra
	 Architecture: i386
	 Installed-Size: 7752
	 Maintainer: Fraser Campbell <fraser@newsol.starnix.com>
	 Description: sophos anti-virus

The above conversion was done from the redhat system (7.3).  The same 
conversion performed on Debian also results in lost dependencies.  The  
conversion performed on Debian at least results in a glibc dependency though 
the dependency I care most about (sav-updates) is still lost.

Does anyone know what might be wrong?  We build this package from cron jobs on 
the redhat machine to install on other redhat machines, converting the 
package with alien for the debian installs we do seemed the easiest approach.  
I probably won't have any problems building the deb directly with 
dpkg-buildpackage but I'm curious about the issue with alien, if it can be 
resolved I still prefer that approach.

Thanks
-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser@wehave.net>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                         Debian GNU/Linux