> Also the .RPM format and the suite of rpm tools are not
> "proprietary" --- they are under the GPL and have been
> ported to several forms of UNIX (including Solaris and
> HP-UX).
I know, I know. But I don't like the design decisions that were made with
rpm / .RPM, and the truth is that I don't like dpkg / .DEB much better.
* I _DO_ see and agree with the need for such a package format and tools! *
Let me clarify what I'm griping (and will continue to gripe) about.
(I do know that it is a lost cause. It is too late for a third format...)
I will explain why a couple of these gripes are *especially* exacerbated
in the tomsrtbt environment. Wouldn't it be nice if tomsrtbt could get
into packages?
Let us take .deb first. This is basically a traditional kind of archive,
a normal tar file, bundled with the package control information in
_another_ tar file, and those 2 are bundled with ar. Ar? Ex-Cuse me,
what could *possibly* be the design rational for taking 2 tar archives,
which already of course require tar to process, and bundling with "ar"
instead of tar on the outside too? "Ar" is a binary library executable
object tool! Using "ar" in the distribution format? I don't get it.
Now. .rpm. This is worse! First, the internal archives are SVR4-cpio
format. Exactly what features of SVR4-cpio were needed over historical
tar or cpio for distribution packaging? Second, the whole thing is
wrapped in a brand new binary format! You have to worry about the right
*version* of your rpm tools!
I just still don't get what is wrong with putting the package control
information into a specially named file (say, CONTROL, or, PACKAGE-META,
or (ala jar) MANIFEST) inside a tar file. Isn't this what SlackWare does?
Maybe I should switch to SlackWare. The package manager can still have
all the same capabilities. I don't have a problem with multiple-layers of
archives. In fact, I would be happy with .deb using tar instead of ar as
the outside layer.
Where this drives me the most crazy is with tomsrtbt. To support
unpacking .deb and .rpm, I need a bunch of tools that have no other use.
I havn't given up on this- I'll eventually have a pax that supports SVR4
format, and I'll write a de-'ar' program in awk.
It all just goes against my unix philosophy of single well focused tools.
-Tom
