From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Sep  8 14:29:00 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-hackers>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA05451
          for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 14:29:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from athena.milk.it (ssigala@line08.globalnet.it [195.206.2.37])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA05425
          for <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 14:28:49 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (ssigala@localhost)
          by athena.milk.it (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP
	  id XAA01310; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 23:27:44 +0200
X-Authentication-Warning: athena.milk.it: ssigala owned process doing -bs
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 23:27:43 +0200 (MET DST)
From: "S. Sigala" <ssigala@globalnet.it>
X-Sender: ssigala@athena.milk.it
To: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@roguetrader.com>
cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: My FreeBSD Wish List...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970908112137.19593B-100000@roguetrader.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970908231433.1269B-100000@athena.milk.it>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, 8 Sep 1997, Brandon Gillespie wrote:
> >   The X11 ports should not be installed in /usr/X11R6 but in the
> >   ports directory /usr/opt, the X Window directories tree should be
> >   never touched by the ports, i.e. should be like /usr/bin or /usr/lib ...
> 
> Your arguments sound ok, but you need to give more details as to the
> problems and how RPM handles them better, I think you would be more likely
> to find improvements to the existing pkg system over simply jumping to
> another system entirely.
> 

I have thought a bit more about the RPM idea; you are right, the
differences are not so much large... it is best to extend the existing
code... i will post asap in the next days
a table of differences between the two packaging system (pros and cons).

> I do have one direct question, what does RPM do if it doesn't tarball
> packages?
> 

I'm not an expert but it is composed at least by

[header] [data] [pkg data]

where [header] contains the rpm magic, the cpu on which the package
works, etc.
[data] contains the compilation host, author informations, package
informations,
the source filename, an optional PGP key, a MD5 checksum or
something like,
the informations on dependencies, the install and deinstall scripts,
and a representation of the expanded tree of the package, for faster
access instead of decompressing the whole package.

[pkg data] is simply a gzipped CPIO archive.

-sandro