dummy packages, wrapper packages, /var/lib/alien, etc.

[Brian Craft]

Where do /var/lib/alien patch files come from? How are they distributed?

I would like to build some wrappers for packages that cannot be
distributed as debs. They are available as rpms on commercial CDs, and
can't be redistributed. The install needs to be very simple, so I don't
want users to be manually running alien. I am considering trying to
write some sort of dummy or wrapper deb that includes all the correct
dependencies, looks for the rpms on the CD, runs them through alien and
installs them, ideally just by adding a repository and running synaptic.

Are there any examples of doing this sort of thing? It could be useful
for other things, like automatically installing rpms of IBM's java once
the user has downloaded them.

b.c.