Scott Ferguson wrote: > Richard wrote: > > Now when I was using rpm based distros, there was an app called > > alien which allowed .deb files to be loaded in an rpm system. Is > > there by chance an app to allow rpms to be loaded, it can't make a > > worse mess than there is already without the extension files. > > Um, yes. It's part of LSB and it's called *alien*. :-) > You can find it in the repositories. YMWV when using it - most failure > to convert from RH to Debian are easily fixed path issues. I have used alien and been into the guts of it and after really wanting it to work I was always disappointed. It sounds like a cool idea. I wanted it to work. But it just can't work perfectly because packages from different systems have different policies. The tool can't be smart enough to understand the policies of both systems and do the right thing in a sentient way. It is the policy differences that case the problems. That doesn't mean that there are some good examples where it works fine though. But it just always seemed that the cases I wanted to use it for were typical cases but ones that through no fault of its own it could not work perfectly. And not working perfectly meant that it made a sloppy mess on my machine. One of the reasons I have been able to successfully upgrade, upgrade, upgrade from release to release is that I don't allow my machine to get messed up between releases. Because of this I stopped using alien entirely. I recommend to avoid alien and to always use native solutions instead. Instead of trying to use alien to install rpms directly perhaps you might say exactly what you are wanting to accomplish and the brain trust on the mailing list might have a native alternative suggestion? Bob
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