Hello! The specification at
http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/spec/chap0201.html says: The current "plan-of-record" is to specify RPM as the file format. It is supported either directly, or indirectly by the widest number of distributions, and so far, no one has pointed out any deficiencies. There is a deficiency. It is very hard to unpack an rpm package without having rpm installed. Users of other OS'es are forced to use hexdump+dd+gzip+cpio or port rpm their systems, install it, initialize database etc. In my opinion, the requirements should be: 1) That any package can be unpacked without using a specific package manager (even if some). It is Ok to require GNU tools for that, such as gzip. 2) That any package can be identified as belonging to a specific distribution or as cross-disribution package without using a specific package manager. Pavel Roskin
