3 ms·

For those of us uninformed, why is RPM a better format than deb?

• rwmj 12y ago
  Primarily the all-in-one spec file is a lot easier to read and write than the scattered files of deb. Also the build system is considerably simpler and more coherent -- you don't have the mess of dh vs cdbs vs flavour of the month. RPM has a nice language and macro system. It's not that deb is bad, just that when I have to package for both, I find the RPM one simpler and easier. Here is a relative simple package, done for both RPM and .deb. The RPM spec is 141 lines (excluding the changelog): http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/virt-top.git/tree/virt-top.spec http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/virt-top.git/tree/virt-to... The .deb is actually shorter in this case, but split over several files, and uses cdbs which I find infuriating with its lack of documentation and multiple hidden implicit rules. If you have a Debian machine around, try reading the /usr/share/cdbs/1/ files some time. Remember also that for most Debian packages, the files come in a tarball or even a patch, which makes them hard to manipulate without obscure deb-* commands. https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-ocaml-maint/packages/virt-top.git/tree/debian https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-ocaml-maint/packages/vir...