Re: tlug: Red Hat vs. Debian

[Craig Oda <craig@example.com>]

On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Does alien do Debian => RedHat as well as RedHat => Debian?  Anyway, I

I think it does.  I think it also accepts input from
 the .tgz format as well.

Here's a bit from the manpage

       To  build  Red Hat packages, alien must be called with the
       --to-rpm parameter, and the name of the alien  package  to
       be  converted.   Alien will then generate a spec file, and
       call rpm to build the  package.  Note  that  rpm  will  by
       default place the new package under /usr/src/redhat/ .

ALIEN PACKAGE FORMATS
       Alien  can  input packages in the Red Hat .rpm format, the
       Debian .deb format, the  Slackware  .tgz  format  and  the
       generic  .tar.gz format. It can ouput to .deb or .rpm for-
       mat.


> Debian as far as I can tell from a few comments on Debian-i18n and (a
> couple of other lists that I haven't read recently).

Hmm, is this a mailing list?  Perhaps I should join it?  I'm mainly
interested in the Japanese issues though.  If most of the discussion
is on European i18n issues, it wouldn't be that useful for me.


> is absent as I recall.  deselect is very good about dependencies, AND
> more important, tells you about them when you are using FTP.  Glint
> only works on the locally available stuff AFAIK.

Yes, this is good about dselect.  It has been a long time since
I used Glint, so I can't really comment on it. 

Say, on a different subject, could you show everyone how to
make a debian package at the next TLUG meeting?  It might be
interesting to get a demonstration of the creation of both
rpm and deb packages and then make a comparison.  I know that
Jim Tittsler creates rpm packages all the time.  (volunteer,
hint, hint).   Actually, this might be good for one of the
themes, compare Debian and Red Hat, from these perspectives:

   o multi-platform support - maybe we can try a Debian Sparc
      installation
   o internationalization - how easy is it to get Red Hat and Debian
      to support Japanese.  Well, at a minimum, Japanese.  Maybe
      Demian and Alberto have Spanish and Portuguese on their
      systems.
   o development - all those custom hacks, including those hacks
      for Japanese support, might be better shared with friends
      and family in a package format.  I guess that Gaspar's 
      sister in Hungary is using Red Hat which is why he released
      yutex binaries in rpm format?  Also, what happened to Andy
      Howell's hacks for the Japanese Fax system?



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