4 ms·

You can install RPMs on Debian but most probably you will run into filesystem-level conflicts with DEB packages. But if you are rebuilding your own Debian-based

by zxspectrum1982 4y ago

You can install RPMs on Debian but most probably you will run into filesystem-level conflicts with DEB packages. But if you are rebuilding your own Debian-based distro, nothing prevents you from packaging everything into RPMs instead of DEBs and that's see. Not that I see the point of that, though.

saghm 4y ago
From what I understand, most of the package-level tools (dpkg, rpm, etc.) will technically work on any Linux system; you just wouldn't be able to share dependency management with whatever the native package management system is, so as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, dealing with file conflicts would be one annoying issue. I think using the repository-level tooling (apt, yum/dnf, etc.) on distros they're not the default on might be harder to do, although I wouldn't be surprised if it also fell into the "technically possible but probably not worth the effort" bucket.
- account42 4y ago
  If you are neither using the distro's packages nor the distro's native tooling then in what way is it based on that distro?
  - saghm 4y ago
    My point is that using non-native tooling might conflict with the native tooling which presumably still exists and is managing some non-trivial portion of the system (at the very least, the base installation, but probably a bunch of other packages as well), so whether or not that conflicts with an external package manager is likely to vary by distro.
loeg 4y ago
Yeah but Debian’s package repository is all deb based. It would be difficult to translate precisely into RPM - they have different tooling and semantics.
- yareally 4y ago
  There does exist a conversion tool between them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(file_converter) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(file_converter)
  - loeg 4y ago
    It's imperfect, due to the aforementioned differences in semantics.
    - janc_ 4y ago
      In practice it is most useful (and probably intended?) for vendor RPMs that install in /opt/ where no conflicts can happen.
  - pxc 4y ago
    The idea of building a whole distro on alien is pretty laughable. Besides, for making a whole distro, what you want to convert between is the source packages, not the binary packages they produce, which is typically (always?) what alien is used for.
- zxspectrum1982 4y ago
  The whole point would be to rebuild Debian (or the subset you need) and package everything as RPMs, i. e. do not use apt, dpkg, etc but yum/dnf, rpm, etc.

saghm 4y ago

From what I understand, most of the package-level tools (dpkg, rpm, etc.) will technically work on any Linux system; you just wouldn't be able to share dependency management with whatever the native package management system is, so as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, dealing with file conflicts would be one annoying issue. I think using the repository-level tooling (apt, yum/dnf, etc.) on distros they're not the default on might be harder to do, although I wouldn't be surprised if it also fell into the "technically possible but probably not worth the effort" bucket.

account42 4y ago
If you are neither using the distro's packages nor the distro's native tooling then in what way is it based on that distro?
- saghm 4y ago
  My point is that using non-native tooling might conflict with the native tooling which presumably still exists and is managing some non-trivial portion of the system (at the very least, the base installation, but probably a bunch of other packages as well), so whether or not that conflicts with an external package manager is likely to vary by distro.

loeg 4y ago

Yeah but Debian’s package repository is all deb based. It would be difficult to translate precisely into RPM - they have different tooling and semantics.

yareally 4y ago
There does exist a conversion tool between them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(file_converter) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(file_converter)
- loeg 4y ago
  It's imperfect, due to the aforementioned differences in semantics.
  - janc_ 4y ago
    In practice it is most useful (and probably intended?) for vendor RPMs that install in /opt/ where no conflicts can happen.
- pxc 4y ago
  The idea of building a whole distro on alien is pretty laughable. Besides, for making a whole distro, what you want to convert between is the source packages, not the binary packages they produce, which is typically (always?) what alien is used for.
zxspectrum1982 4y ago
The whole point would be to rebuild Debian (or the subset you need) and package everything as RPMs, i. e. do not use apt, dpkg, etc but yum/dnf, rpm, etc.