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List:       kde-announce
Subject:    [comp.os.linux.announce] alien 5.12 - rpm, dpkg, and slackware tgz package converter
From:       Richard Moore <moorer () cs ! man ! ac ! uk>
Date:       1997-07-29 17:16:06
[Download RAW message or body]


This may be of some use to people who want to use prebuilt binaries
but don't use Red Hat.

Rich.

-- 
 _______________________________________________________________________ 
| Richard Moore                         | Email: moorer@cs.man.ac.uk    |
| IT301, Computer Science dept.,        | Phone: (0161) 438 0038 (home) |
| University of Manchester, Oxford Rd., |        (0161) 275 6270 (work) |
| Manchester, M13 9PL                   |        (0161) 275 6280 (fax)  |
|_______________________________________|_______________________________|
------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: joey@kite.ml.org (Joey Hess)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: alien 5.12 - rpm, dpkg, and slackware tgz package converter
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:40:48 GMT
Organization: Preferred Internet Inc.
Message-ID: <pycola.869758848.26812@liw.clinet.fi>

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With all the recent space events -- Debian orbiting on the space
shuttle, Pathfinder on Mars beaming back pictures that are displayed
in XV on a computer at NASA, etc -- it seems appropriate to announce a
new version of a more down to earth type of alien: the alien package
converter, version 5.12.

Changes since version 5.0 include:

  * Alien can now convert debs and rpms to Slackware tgz format!
  * Support for relocatable and noarch rpms.
  * Fixed /install directory bugs in installation of slackware packages.
  * Fixed bug with converting packages with dashes in the version number
    to rpms.
  * Several other minor bugfixes.

So, what's alien, then?

  Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, and slackware
  tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another
  distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can
  use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install
  it.

Warning, alien can be dangerous:

  Despite the high version number, alien is still (and will probably
  always be) rather experimental software. It's been under development
  for 9 months now, but there are still many limitations. For one thing,
  Alien only handles binary packages, not source packages. It also
  doesn't try to convert the scripts that should be run when the package
  installs.

  Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like
  sysvinit, libc, or other things that are essential for the functioning
  of your system. Many of these packages are set up differently by the
  different distributions, and packages from the different distributions
  cannot be used interchangeably. In general, if you can't uninstall the
  package without breaking your system, don't try to replace it with an
  alien version.

Getting alien:

  The newest versions of alien are available at the alien home page,
  (and besides, you can't afford to miss my picture of Tux from Mars ;-),
  so drop by http://kite.ml.org/programs/alien/

  On sunsite and its mirrors, alien is located in the
  pub/Linux/utils/scripts/ directory.

  You can also get rpm or deb packages of alien:
  deb: ftp://master.debian.org/debian/unstable/binary-all/admin/alien_*.deb
  rpm: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/noarch/alien-*.rpm

Other things you'll need:

  To use alien, you will need several other programs. Alien is a perl
  program, and requires perl version 5 or greater.

  To convert packages to or from rpms, you need the Red Hat Package
  Manager; get it from Red Hat's ftp site.

  If you want to convert packages into debian packages, you will need
  the dpkg, dpkg-dev, and debmake packages, which are available on the
  Debian ftp site.

  Attention, Slackware and Red Hat users: Bruce S. Babcock
  <BABCOCK@MATH.PSU.EDU> has put together an "alien-extra"
  package of all the extra files you need to use alien on
  a Red Hat or Slackware system.
  The Slackware version is at
          ftp://kite.ml.org/pub/code/alien/extra/alien-extra.tgz
  The RedHat version is at
          ftp://kite.ml.org/pub/code/alien/extra/alien-extra-1.i386.rpm

Please report any bugs in alien to the author:

  Joey Hess <joey@kite.ml.org>




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