On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 10:00:14PM +0200, Egon Willighagen wrote: > maybe it is a stupid question, but can debian packages be installed in other > places than / ? > > I know that when the package is compiled the Makefile has a $DESTDIR > attribute, but is this preserved in the deb package? > > This issue came up when i tried to convince someone that debian packages > are a good addition to tar.gz for distribution... but one argument he gave, > was the question if non-root users could install debian packages? > > Is this possible?
Debian packages require root privileges for installation. While you could unpack a .deb in your home directory and use the files in it, you would lose most of the advantages of using a packaging system (file tracking, autoconfiguration, etc.). If you use it this way, a .deb is no better than a .tar with binaries in it. I suppose you could install most simple .debs in a chroot environment where you owned everything, but many packages (notably those which run daemons, cron jobs, etc.) expect to be able to perform tasks as root. That said, .debs _are_ a good addition to .tar.gz for distribution. This is what Debian developers (in general) do: create and distribute .debs. -- - mdz