Please try to get it right in future

Matt Zimmerman mdz at canonical.com
Tue Oct 19 02:58:42 UTC 2004


On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 10:39:13AM +0800, John wrote:

> I have noticed that rpms (the packages) don't do as much stuffing round 
> after installation as debs do (yes, I'm generalising).

Debian packages are expected to configure themselves.

> Where debs' scripts make symlinks, in RH rpms (I really don't know what
> other vendors do, so I'm talking solely of RH) the symlinks are included
> in the package. Some debs seem to generate config files, and this can make
> space harder to estimate.

Debian packages do both, depending on the situation.  There are specific
circumstances where each method is preferred.

> rpm has several nice features that would be handing in dpkg. Something 
> that would have bene _extremely_ handy the other day is something 
> quivalent to
> rpm -Va
> which would validate all packages on the system, checking for file 
> changes and permsissions changes.

dpkg doesn't keep track of original file permissions or ownership, and at
this time it is common for packages to set ownership in maintainer scripts
when the target user is created dynamically.

> rpm maintains checksums for every file: if I edit /usr/bin/debmirror then
> rpm would highlight that.

dpkg does save the checksums provided in the .deb in its database.  Rather
than building the verification functionality into dpkg, an external tool
implements that part of the functionality.

-- 
 - mdz




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