Re: AW: RPM is hard to unpack
On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Alan Cox wrote:
> > I'm fully with you!
> > IMO the actual practice for the shipment of packages as *.tar.gz or
> > *.tar.bz2 is better than using *.spm or *.rpm.
>
> Then a typical user cannot install them and no distribution can manage them
> for removal and you might as well run windows 3.1
What prevents you from putting control files in any format into a tarball?
Debian packages are "ar" archives, but this doesn't prevent "typical
users" from installing (and uninstalling!) them without direct using "ar"
Debian packages are yet more complicated that RedHat one. Not only do they
support dependencies, but also one package can "suggest" another without
strict dependency.
But if I want to extract some files from a package on, say, HP-UX (I may
want to extract a perl script or a pixmap or whatever else) it is much
earier to deal with Debian packages. If there is gzip on that machine,
I need not download anything at all.
The question is about internals, not about the interface which is normally
used. An open OS should use widely accepted formats for software
packaging.
Pavel Roskin
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