Its been a while, but if I remember correctly, RPMs are in cpio format.
Tim
Ethan Benson wrote:
On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 01:08:21PM -0400, Albert den Haan wrote:
The LSB's LCD ("Lowest Common Denominator") is working on a simple package
system that is the *intersection* of capabilities the major ones in current
use. Yes the RPM V3 [1] package archive file format is being used (as
*.lsb files), but to handle data dpkg both requires and will not choke on.
[snip]
[1] Note that this archive file format is understood by both the rpm V3 and V4 programs.
may i suggest you use a more generic format? .debs are nothing more
then an ar archive containing a couple gzipped tarballs. they can
extracted on virtually any system, regardless of OS even. this is a
tremendous advantage IMO, both because for example slackware need not
put rpm into thier distro, and more importantly for recovery
purposes. it can be a life saver to be able to quickly extract a
package on a badly hosed system. (lets say a bout of filesystem
corruption wipes out /bin/rpm) and yes i have had this type of thing
happen before. debian's human readable and editable package database,
and open and standard ar+tar+gzip package format saved me from a
reinstall.
this choice of using the rpm binary format should be reconsidered IMNSHO. i don't really care whether you use the debian ar+tar+gzip, or just plain .tar.gz, just use something i can extract *anywhere* with the most basic and standard tools, without having to go and compile rpm or some rpm archive extracter.
-- Timothy H. Keitt Department of Ecology and Evolution State University of New York at Stony Brook Phone: 631-632-1101, FAX: 631-632-7626 http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/keitt/
