🚀 go-pugleaf

Manfred Bartz (mbartz@werple.net.au) wrote:
: [Snip]
: I generally recommend against Redhat because they promote a
: non-standard package format (.rpm files).  I believe in keeping to
: established standards.  Additional features should be incorporated
: within those standards.  RPM format does not provide anything that
: could not have been encapsulated in a `.tar.gz' or `.tgz' file.

	<choke> C|N>K what ?!?! Um... verification information,
indexed file listing, summary information, install and uninstall
script...

Yes, they _could_ put these into files in a .tar.gz, but you'd need a
special tool - ie. other than tar - to make use of them. I don't see
how this is significantly different from rpm. If you do use tar, those
files are just going to get dumped somewhere, which if you're not
using the same conventions about such things as this "package format"
is using is _bad_. At least with an rpm, this extra crud is only going
to be extracted if its used. Otherwise you can use rpm2cpio which 
extracts the (standard) cpio archive around which RPM files are based.

In short .tar.gz is _not_ a package format. An archive format maybe,
but it simply does not provide the facilities a good package manager
can. Adding packaging information to a .tar.gz is essentially writing a
non-standard extension to tar. At least with rpm you _know_ it's not
just a plain archive. ie. rpm and tar address different problems. Trying
extend tar is a worse abuse of standards than writing a new file format.

That said, I must agree that j.stokes was unsubstantiated in his
claim. I happen to like redhat, but to make a broad claim like his
is simply foolish.

--
David Gibson @ The Lorax	| New from Microsoft...
david%brucehall20@anu.edu.au	| 	THNEED 95
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