"unlike rpm which you need to compile rpm to access a .rpm." I think not. I managed to open an .rpm using the Gnome file manager in a debian-based installation. An .rpm appears to be a cpio archive. Correct me, folks, if this is misinformation.
Besides, you can always "alien"-ate an .rpm On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Ethan Benson wrote: > > On Sun, Sep 10, 2000 at 01:58:45PM -0700, John L . Fjellstad wrote: > [snip] > > distributions can't start using debs. Heck, every major version of > > RPM is incompatible with previous version anyways. Reason I switched is > > because the RPM used in 6.x (v3.x) can't read packages for 7 (v4). > > Now, I don't know how hard it to change the database, but from what I > > understand, both debs and rpms use text based database, so it shouldn't > > be impossible. > > nope, rpm uses a binary database for everything, and a custom > fileformat. deb uses a text database (which is trivial to change, and > extend, debian has done this many times already with no real break in > compatiblity) .debs are also nothing special, just an ar archive of > two .tar.gz files. you can extract a .deb on any platform that has > ar, tar and gzip. unlike rpm which you need to compile rpm to access > a .rpm. > > -- > Ethan Benson > http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ > ---------------------------------------- Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="unnamed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: ----------------------------------------