On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Max Horn wrote: > With fink, for every package there is an .info file (and possibly a > .patch file, too). Fink then uses the data from this .info file to > retrieve the source tarball(s), expand them, patch them, compile > everything, and then package it into a .deb (this is much shortened > version of the full process). These .debs then are just like any > other .deb, and can be installed (and "fink install <package>" does > exactly this, by calling dpkg). > > apt-get differs in that it only knows how to download a .deb from a > set of servers. Fink OTOH builds those from scratch. Afterwards, both > sets of .debs (the self made ones, and the downloaded ones) can be > used completely equally. In fact, once you have the .deb, "fink > install" always will use that .deb instead of recreating it (unless > you force it to via "fink rebuild").
With all due respect, Max, I believe you are mistaken about apt-get having this defiency: apt-get source <source-package> Downloads the "vanilla" source tarball, a descriptive .dsc file and a patch file -- the latter two containing much the same info as the fink's .info file. Does the .info have some benefit over the patch/.dsc combo, and if so, what is it? The only issues I can think of are: * "apt-get source" pulls down into the current directory by default, rather than a standard location, e.g. /usr/src. (but trivial to fix if fink is providing a layer on top apt-get) * local copies of source packages are not tracked the same as binary packages, so you could pull down a duplicate copy unnecessarily. (although there's /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin -- what is that?) * the ability to specify a site/directory for the tarball and patch that is different. (not sure on this -- given the format of the .dsc, it would an easy capability to add) It's possible these issues have been dealt with in a more recent version than I have installed on my Debian machines (0.5.3). pine and qmail are both example of a Debian package that I have to do this with, precisely because Debian won't make binary packages available for license reasons. _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
