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> On Aug 02, 2002 at 03:19:27PM, Fred K Ollinger wrote:
> >
> > <advocacy>
> >
> > W/ debian, you can also do all the rpm commands, first do
> >
> > apt-get install rpm
>
> and apt-get install librpm4. Then do a mkdir /var/lib/rpm.
>
> > as debian supports rpm. You can build a rpm is debian source isn't
> > available then do
>
> After doing the above, you should be able to use rpm natively, without using
> alien to convert to a .deb.
So true, however, there are many reasons it's better to roll your own
packages, esp if you have the src.rpm under debian.
If it's an rpm binary, then it might work if there are the right
libararies and dependencies installed. But rpm doesn't know about dpkg
database, so you probably have everything installed and rpm doesn't know
that.
If the rpm installs if the deps are not there, then you will have a broken
package, and you might not find out later.
Also, if you do get rpm to install properly, and you have newer packages
that depend upon the rpm, dpkg won't know about it, and complain even if
it's installed. If you use rpm, then you have all the troubles of the
above (plus the extra rpm troubles that most of us know about).
If you rebuild the rpm package from src.rpm, you know all deps are
installed otherwise it won't compile. If it fails, it will tell you what
it needs. Finally, if you create a deb, you can stick your deb in your apt
repository and apt-get it on all machines (easiest way to install), and
if you have a new version of the package, apt-will compare and upgrade for
you instead of installing a new package on top of an older one.
Also, if you use dpkg to list packages, you can see _all_ your packages.
If you use rpm, too, you need two commands to check out all packages and
this can be a pain.
So basically, you should use rpm sparingly in debian, and only use alien
or rpm on packages that are non-essential (usually commercial sw), these
packages usually have few deps (static compilation), can't be
recompiled anyway (hidden source code), and there are few packages
downstream that will depend upon these packages, so you don't have to
worry, too much, about letting dpkg know that they are there.
Fred
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