I had the time to do a research in Internet about rpm/jar. The correct URLs
are:
* http://www.rpm.org
* http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/jar/
I found great utilitaries in http://www.rpm.org/software.html, we could
probably steal some of them for `par'. I found out that most of them are
written in Perl or otherwise Perl-related.
* rpm2html / rpmfind: The equivalent of CPAN.pm?
* rpm-cvs: Building a RPM from a CVS source tree.
* AutoRpm: Update a system with rpms from any source.
* rpmlint: A lint for rpms packages.
* Perl-RPM: Attempts Perl bindings for RPM.
* build-package: Build rpms from source packages.
I put together a comparison table between par and rpm/jar. I would include
tgz here, but I didn't want to break the 70 column barrier and I think it
would probably be No for most features anyway... I intend to include the
table with the beta PDD.
+-------------+-------------+-------------+
Comparison table: | par | rpm | jar |
+----------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Platform independent | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| | | | |
| Available in a wide | Yes | No | Yes |
| range of platforms | | (Win32 +/-, | |
| | | MacOS, VMS) | |
| | | | |
| Allow platform | Yes | Yes | No |
| dependent deployment | | | |
| | | | |
| Supports binary, | Yes | Yes | No |
| source and bytecode | | | (source?) |
| | | | |
| Install archive | Yes | Yes | No |
| automatically | | | (manually) |
| | | | |
| Uninstall and | Yes | Yes | No |
| upgrade archive | | | |
| | | | |
| Install, uninstall | No | Yes | No |
| and upgrade scripts | (possibly) | | |
| | | | |
| Run from archive | Yes | No | Yes |
| | | | |
| Resources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| | | | |
| Documentation | Yes | Yes | No |
| | | | |
| Supports various | Yes | No | Yes |
| modules per archive | | (yes) | (packages) |
| | | | |
| Merge many archives | Yes | No | Yes |
| in one | | | |
| | | | |
| Usable with external | Yes | No | Yes |
| tools (e.g. WinZip) | | | |
| | | | |
| Dependencies of | Yes | Yes | No |
| the archive | (included) | | |
| | | | |
| Build archive from | Yes | Yes | No |
| source tree | | (external) | |
| | | | |
| Could be bundled | Yes | Probably | Maybe (if |
| with Perl 6? | | No | we bundle |
| | | (too big) | a JVM too) |
| | | | |
| Signed archives | No | No | Yes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
+----------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
- Branden
