Jerney wrote: > Call me a silly fool, but I cannot but wonder would it be possible > to make a pkg mgmt program (drpm :-)) that would install RPM > packages from their native format and put the installed files' and > dependencies info in the deb database? > > Any dpkg developers willing to comment the idea?
I am no dpkg developper, but I'll bite anyway. The program exists and is not called drpm, but alien. The problems are not in reading the package and it's dependency information, the problem is in the organisation of the programs into packages. For example (just an example, I don't know if it is true), RedHat could have a package x11-clients_3.3.2.rpm, and debian a package xbase_3.2-1.deb. Say both contain `xterm'. Now if a third package needs `xterm', it will depend on x11-clients in RedHat, and on xbase in debian. If this is an rpm package, alien will spot that it depends on x11-clients, but this information is near useless, since this package does not exist in debian. Something else that can go wrong is file placement. One distibution might put xterm in /usr/bin, another one could choose /opt/x11/bin. Programs that depend on a certain full pathname can break because of this. Then there may be differences in configuration files. Note that the problems I described are not due to differences in the package format at all. They can arise between Caldera and RedHat as well, although they both use rpm. The fact that there is only one distribution currently using .debs actually protects you from this kind of trouble. HTH, Eric Meijer -- E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | tel. office +31 40 2472189 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
