On Sat, 23 May 1998 06:31:32 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>On Sat, May 23, 1998 at 12:14:34AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 May 1998 16:25:46 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
>> 
>> >The "other data" in Debian's case is stuff like dependency information,
>> >installation and removal scripts, and the maintainer's contact address.
>>    
>>     Proprietary to Debian...

>I am not sure what you mean "proprietary to debian"

    Dependancies aren't used outside Debian's packaging.  That information is
presented, also, in the README.  Installation and removal scripts, ditto.

>Well yes...
>debian has chosen to operate around dpkg, a packagig system.

    Correct.

>the point is to make it easy for a system administrator (even
>the smallest user setting up their own box can be considered
>the "System Administrator" of that box). 

    Even better.


>The idea is that dpkg is a program which is capable of taking the 
>"package" and checking to make sure that it meets dependancies (i.e. if 
>the program is actually a perl script, then it wont install if perl doesn't 
>exist)  

    And this is fine, for Debian.

>>     Here is why a lot of people are looking at SLP and liking it.

>> tar xzf blah.slp

>>     There ya go, that's it, end of story.  No cpio, no ar, nothing but 

>.deb format is NOT out to replace .tar.gz ...but they really are not
>the same thing (while internally it does use .tgz and ar etc...

    I never said it was.  I was pointing out that SLP could be.

>a .deb is really "more than the sum of its parts")
>In fact that is exactly how we distribute source code!
>there is the orrig.tar.gz a diff.gz and a text .dsc file

    But this isn't about deb, this is about SLP.

>The fact is that .tgz is great for archives (and backups...
>I use tar with my tape drive) but I (and many debian users)
>feel that dpkg makes a good packaging systemn and makes system >adminitration 
>allot easier (rpm does too, even tho most people here don't >like to admit it 
>:) )

    Never said it wasn't.  But what people who look at SLP and the fact that
it is just a TGZ with information at the end are looking at is not just this
system or that system it is all systems as a whole.

    RPMs are nice, but outside Red Hat they're not fun.  DEB, same thing. 
Unless you have the package manager that comes along with it, they never
really get used.  SLP, without the package manager, *CAN* be used by anyone
who is used to tar.  

>Even if we all just used .tgz archives and SLP, this makes the
>question of it moot because yes, you don't need the extra stuff
>you can just unpack it, but if you don't use SLP, then 
>unpack it with .tar.gz...it is still possible that what you unpack
>will not intergrate well with your system

    Correct.  But, again, my scope is beyond any one system.

>In the end it is all a matter of what you want to do. Personally I like 
>dpkg and deb files (One should hope I would, I just uploaded a new
>version of a package to master not even an hour ago). I like the system
>debian has developed. 

    So do I.  I came to Debian because of dselect and aside from small
problems I personally have with it that have been discussed to death on the
user list I like it all around.  

>in any case, the comparison between SLP and deb files is unimportant
>it sounds to me like just 2 different ways to solve the same problem
>most systems have ar and tar and gz so really the idea of "you don't
>need ar and cpio" really is unimportant

    It isn't the fact that they are available but the fact that most people
are unaware of their use.  You know, I've been using Linux for over two years
and until this discussion I've never heard of ar?  Until a discussion I had
on the newsgroups about RPM a while back I was unaware of cpio.  The while
time I have used tgz.  



-- 
             Steve C. Lamb             | Opinions expressed by me are not my
    http://www.calweb.com/~morpheus    | employer's.  They hired me for my
             ICQ: 5107343              | skills and labor, not my opinions!
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