Let's complain about package formats! (WAS: A plague of daemons and the Unix Philosophy)

[Flaherty, Patrick]

> The simple answer is that I highly prefesr rpm over debian. 
> The access is far simpler. Full use of deb files implies 
> about 13 different packages be loaded just to do deb things. 
> I'm in a situation right now where I have to create .deb 
> files and, while I'm getting my job done, I can tell you 
> there is no book that you can buy to teach you all you need 
> to know about the hundreds of places where documentation 
> exists on how it all works together. 

If you are compelled to creating deb packages, but don't desire to make
them "properly" try checkinstall
(http://asic-linux.com.mx/%7Eizto/checkinstall/). It reduces turning
source into dpkgs to `checkinstall -D make install`. I've had to make
debs before, and though I never had to much trouble making them right,
checkinstall lets you skip a bunch of steps. You should read the readme,
deb packages require you to make a few script directories in your source
directory. You might be able to add gross dependency checking or
alerting that a package isn't installed using a script in
preinstall-pack.


> I'm living with it and I have a few things I know how to do, 
> but compared to RPM and the available docs for it, deb files 
> suck big green donkey dicks.
What a wonderfully non-inflammatory comment. Godwin be damned, did I
mention rpm actively participated in the holocaust. -=]

Patrick