James schreef: > How does a gentoo system know the difference between an rpm file that > it can install and a rpm file that it cannot or should not install > on a gentoo system? >
It's not like RPMs (or DEBs for that matter) just *appear* on the system and are installed by mental telepathy.... if you emerge an ebuild for which the package file is an RPM (RealPlayer and the ATI proprietary drivers are two which come to mind), then that is what will be installed. The Portage system knows what files are available to it, because that's what the Portage tree is for. For example, the Cedega binary package is available as an RPM, a DEB amd a TGZ-- but if you attempt to install it (it's a fetch-restricted package, which requires subscription to download, so you have to download it and put it in /usr/portage/distfiles yourself by default) it's not like Portage wants any of the three. It wants specifically the -small.tgz, and you could put the RPM in distfiles if you wanted, but Portage wouldn't install it. Because that's not the package that the ebuild specifies. Of course, you could install rpm and install any rpm you wanted with it-- but since you don't have an RPM database, and even if you did, all the dependent libraries and system files wouldn't be in it (because they were not installed from RPM), it would be likely to end in tears (which would be no less than one deserved, since if one wanted to use RPMs so bad, one should have installed a binary distro that depends on them and not a source-based distro like this one :-) ). In any case, the relatively few RPMs in the Portage tree are generally there (afaik), because we don't get a choice about it-- the binaries provided (usually by some proprietary source) are only packaged *as* RPMs, so if we want or need them, that's what we have to use. Certainly that is the case for the ATI drivers, and likely for the RealPlayer package as well. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
