The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Can I interest anyone in RPM?

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:

> I think we should at least explore the issue of using RPM/GLINT, etc.,
> as it's now become the clear standard packaging system for Linux - we
> are almost the only holdout. I know it's not as powerful as
> dpkg/dselect, but it's powerful enough to get along and we can add what we
> need. We aren't really getting anywhere by going in our own direction,
> away from every other Linux, writing new software to duplicate what already
> exists.
> 
> The last time I brought this up, perhaps a year ago, it started an
> awful flame-war. This time I'd like all of the developers to seriously
> consider it.
> 
> I don't think Debian is its packaging system. Debian is the open development
> paradigm, the volunteers, and the committment to free software. What we use
> to package that software is irrelevant.

There are two different things with RPM/GLINT, the package format and the
tools. I'm not an expert in RPM package format, rpm or glint, and it would
be nice if one could do a technical comparison, describing the inners of
each of those beasties, before deciding to switch over to RPM, with all
the work involved (think about converting ~1500 deb packages to RPM,
defining an upgrade path for our current user base... and recycling ~200
developers to the new packaging format). 

AFAIK, the scene looks like:

- the package format:

As you said, RPM is not as powerful as deb. Also, deb packages and 
debianized sources can be extracted with the usual tools (ar, tar, gzip,
patch, ...).

OTOH, RPM is widely used. Good, we can install any RPM package using
alien. This functionality may be enhanced and merged into dpkg if we 
want it.

- the tools:

rpm is not better than dpkg either.

While I agree that glint seems nicer and easier to use than dselect,
it has its faults also (see the recent announce of XRPM in c.o.l.a. to
know about a glint user's opinion). 

So what are we buying here? Do we have to abandon deb package format
and dpkg just for a nicer frontend? Are there that many tools available
for processing RPM packages? I guess it would be better to modify glint 
to be a dpkg frontend.  

	Just my opinion, of course...
-- 
Enrique Zanardi						   ezanardi@ull.es
Dpto. Fisica Fundamental y Experimental			Univ. de La Laguna



--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-private-request@lists.debian.org . 
Trouble?  e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .