Re: /usr/src/linux/Documentation/Changes

Fred Reimer (Fred.Reimer@bellsouth.net)
Wed, 7 Apr 1999 11:11:59 -0400


From: Landon Fuller <lfuller@real.com>
> Stupidity? Hardly. RPM is a technically inferior package format, and one
> that I refuse to support. I myself am a debian user, and I do not except
> anything central to the Linux OS to be distributed in the debian package
> format. In fact, I prefer it not be distributed in any format other than a
> tar'd, gzip'd file. To expect people to keep up with a silly package
> format is absurd. I would hope you would see that. There is nothing in a
> RPM that can't be done with a little scripting, and if you want things
> automated, then feel free to do just that. However, if you decide you want
> RPMs, you make damn well sure to include slackware packages, debian
> packages, and whatever the fuck else all the myriad of distributions use,
> because favoring one distribution over another is just going to screw us
> all in the long run.

Well, gee! I kind of find myself in agreement with this. I personally am
running RedHat, but I also ran Debian, and long ago slackware and SLS. What
about if the maintainers of a particular module included make options to
make the appropriate package type, but still deliver them in tar.gz format?
In other words, the could have been a rpm make target that would make the
appropriate rpm. There could also have been a srcrpm make target to make a
source rpm, or a deb make target to make a Debian package, etc. That way,
for those who wanted to use rpm's or deb's or whatever, all they would have
to do is untar it and then run one make command to get the package type of
their choice. Those who don't use packages can happily ignore the extra
cruft that is included for package users...

Good idea?

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