Improving .deb

Posted Jun 6, 2019 9:38 UTC (Thu) by hensema (guest, #980)
In reply to: Improving .deb by compenguy
Parent article: Improving .deb

> The database format of rpms is painful to deal with, and really rather impractical for some of the use cases described in the article, such as extracting the installer contents for manual installation on an unsupported system.

Rpm is using cpio as its archive format. Equally arcane as ar, but it does enable you to extract an rpm on foreign systems.

> Also, most of the linux installation professionals I know hate rpm with a passion and would much rather work with deb packages, for a host of reasons not directly relating to the file format itself.

So what you're saying it's better to invent a new format to avoid hurting feelings of those "professionals"?

Let's face it: Debian can still be Debian even if they switch their underlying package format to RPM. Or any other vaguely modern package format.

Refactoring .deb is a good thing, but it does make sense to shop around for existing solutions that work, are mature and maintained.