Alan Eugene Davis: dpkg is a pleasure to use on .deb packages; it would be wonderful if it were able to log in non-debian packages, and, likewise, if debian packages could be exported. On the first, maybe a script would enable me to package up a tar file, add comments?
As I understand it, the adding odd files to a package mechanism is on the todo list. However, if you don't mind a couple minutes work you can easily make your own "debian packages". For example, you could make a directory named slak-emacs, go into that directory and untar the slackware emacs stuff. Then, make the directory slak-emacs/DEBIAN/ and put in it a file named 'control' with the contents: Package: slak-emacs Version: 0 Maintainer: nobody Description: emacs Provides: emacs [feel free to change the values around to your tastes.] Then, in the parent directory type dpkg-deb --build slak-emacs and it will make you a .deb format file. Likewise, if you have a .deb format file you can unpack it in an empty directory (use the --root= option to dpkg) then user tar to repack it. You'll lose some information (the setup and cleanup scripts and everything in the control file) but presumably you don't care about this. -- Raul
