[NTLUG:Discuss] Things You Can Do With Packaging Tools...

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000 09:17:14 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
"A.L.Lambert" <alambert at epicrealm.com>  said:
> > I am not a packager, so once again, I may be wrong.
> > 	From what I understand, deb's will allow running of scripts
> > before install to shut down services, and after to re-start them. It
> > also has a inteligent way of comparing the config files to determine
> > if it needs to ask you which version of the files you want to keep if
> > they are different.  I am sure rpm's do some of the same, but I
> > understand that debs do a better job.
> 
> 	Yeah, that's all stuff you can easily do with RPM's if you know
> the bare basics of shell scripting, and actually read the documentation on
> what all the *.spec file syntax can do.  It's like anything else I
> suppose; it's all easy if you know how to do it. :)

The problem is that there are so many cruddy *.spec files out there that
_don't_ do this.

And that there is little agreed on policy of what sorts of services
_should_ be set up, and how.

The "win" with .debs is that after running them through lintian, you may
get a number of suggestions of "what to fix to make it better," as well
as having some more clearly agreed-on conventions of where stuff should
go.
--
cbbrowne at ntlug.org - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/>
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unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117
and the hero is just putting his plan into operation."
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