Package alien

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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Hello,
I would like to ask you, why was a package "alien" removed from RH distros?
Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and
slackware tgz file formats. (http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien/)

Thanks

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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[Alex Lancaster]

> >>>> "ZP" == Zdenek Prikryl  writes: 
ZP> Hello, I would like to ask you, why was a package "alien" removed
ZP> from RH distros?  Alien is a program that converts between the
ZP> rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file
ZP> formats. (http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien/)

I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think maybe
back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?), it's not even listed as
orphaned in the PackageDB:

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/alien

gives a 404.

There's no reason it couldn't be readded, AFAICT, if you wanted to
become a contributor to the Fedora package collection:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join

Alex

[Oliver Falk]

On 12/05/2007 03:10 PM, Alex Lancaster wrote:
> >>>>> "ZP" == Zdenek Prikryl  writes:
>  
>  ZP> Hello, I would like to ask you, why was a package "alien" removed
>  ZP> from RH distros?  Alien is a program that converts between the
>  ZP> rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file
>  ZP> formats. (http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien/)
>  
>  I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think maybe
>  back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?), it's not even listed as
>  orphaned in the PackageDB:
>  
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/alien
>  
>  gives a 404.
>  
>  There's no reason it couldn't be readded, AFAICT, if you wanted to
>  become a contributor to the Fedora package collection:
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join
>  
>  Alex
>   
Last time included in RH, was EL 2.1

http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=alien&submit=S....

PLD and OpenSuSE have RPMs, TurboLinux also. If someone wants to include
alien, PLD specfile might be a good starting point...

-of

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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>  I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think maybe
>  back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?) 
Yes, I found alien in RH-[78], but then was removed. And nobody knows why :-)

>  There's no reason it couldn't be readded, AFAICT, if you
> wanted to
>  become a contributor to the Fedora package collection:
>  
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join 
If I don't find some important reason, why I shouldn't add this to fedora, then
 I'll try to be a maintainer.

Thanks

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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[Oliver Falk]

On 12/05/2007 03:27 PM, Zdenek Prikryl wrote:
> > I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think
> maybe
> > back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?)
>  
>  Yes, I found alien in RH-[78], but then was removed. And nobody knows why :-)
>  
> > There's no reason it couldn't be readded, AFAICT, if you wanted to
> > become a contributor to the Fedora package collection:
>  
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join
>  
>  If I don't find some important reason, why I shouldn't add this to fedora, then
>   I'll try to be a maintainer. 
The question is: It has been absent for a long time now, so it seems
nobody really needs it, does someone? :-)

Well. I guess there are a lot of pkgs that only a few guys do use in
reality, so go for it. Package it. Share it. Use it.

Best,
 Oliver

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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>  The question is: It has been absent for a long time now, so it seems
>  nobody really needs it, does someone? :-) 
at least, I use it sometimes (not very often, but...sometimes yes) :-)...

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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[Oliver Falk]

On 12/05/2007 03:39 PM, Zdenek Prikryl wrote:
> > The question is: It has been absent for a long time now, so it
> seems
> > nobody really needs it, does someone? :-)
>  
>  at least, I use it sometimes (not very often, but...sometimes yes) :-)... 
Well. This wasn't in question. :-)

-of

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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>  I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think maybe
>  back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?),  
Hmm after little investigation I found, that convert deb, tgz, slp to rpm isn't
problem. But reverse conversion is big problem. For example, if I want to
convert rmp do deb, I have to have installed dpkg[-dev] and debhelper, which are
debian packages for creating deb files. All of those packages aren't in fedora
repos.

So, question is, if one-way conversion is a sufficient reason to create alien
package. Other solution is create another package (like deb in OpenSUSE) which
contains those debian packages and make alien dependant on this new package. Or
let alien be forgotten henceforth.

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno
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[Oliver Falk]

On 12/05/2007 05:19 PM, Zdenek Prikryl wrote:
> > I think it was removed a long time ago before Fedora (I think
> maybe
> > back in the Red Hat 8 or 9 days, perhaps?), 
>  
>  Hmm after little investigation I found, that convert deb, tgz, slp to rpm isn't
>  problem. But reverse conversion is big problem. For example, if I want to
>  convert rmp do deb, I have to have installed dpkg[-dev] and debhelper, which are
>  debian packages for creating deb files. All of those packages aren't in fedora
>  repos.
>  
>  So, question is, if one-way conversion is a sufficient reason to create alien
>  package. Other solution is create another package (like deb in OpenSUSE) which
>  contains those debian packages and make alien dependant on this new package. Or
>  let alien be forgotten henceforth. 
I think you start with one-way version (if you like) and try to get the
missing links into Fedora as well and then switch your alien pkg to
rebuild and/or use the missing bits...

Else, get the deb bits into Fedora and afterwards alien itself... Which
sounds for me like the best idea....

-of

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 05:24:30PM +0100, Oliver Falk wrote:
>  
>  I think you start with one-way version (if you like) and try to get the
>  missing links into Fedora as well and then switch your alien pkg to
>  rebuild and/or use the missing bits...
>  
>  Else, get the deb bits into Fedora and afterwards alien itself... Which
>  sounds for me like the best idea.... 
Indeed, it seems to me that alien should depend on dpkg.
I have packages available for dpkg, and other debian stuff (and
debootstrap is already in fedora):

http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/dumas/fc-srpms/debian/

--
Pat

[Oliver Falk]

On 12/05/2007 05:41 PM, Patrice Dumas wrote:
>  On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 05:24:30PM +0100, Oliver Falk wrote:
> > I think you start with one-way version (if you like) and try to get the
> > missing links into Fedora as well and then switch your alien pkg to
> > rebuild and/or use the missing bits...
> >
> > Else, get the deb bits into Fedora and afterwards alien itself... Which
> > sounds for me like the best idea....
>  
>  Indeed, it seems to me that alien should depend on dpkg.
>  I have packages available for dpkg, and other debian stuff (and
>  debootstrap is already in fedora):
>  
>  http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/dumas/fc-srpms/debian/ 
Well then Zdenek, get the specs. Do a cleanup, run rpmlint, upload
somewhere and file a review request :-)

-of

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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Patrice Dumas napsal(a):
>  Indeed, it seems to me that alien should depend on dpkg.
>  I have packages available for dpkg, and other debian stuff (and
>  debootstrap is already in fedora):
>  
>  http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/dumas/fc-srpms/debian/ 
I went through your spes file of dpkg and found, that you're doing some renaming
of executables, which could be already in fedora. But I thing, that if other
dpkg scripts want to use for example install-info, then it will use fedora's
install-info instead renamed install-info from dpkg package. So, are these
renamed executables needed in package? If not, we can make package without them.

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:34:11AM +0100, Zdenek Prikryl wrote:
>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  Hash: SHA1
>  
>  Patrice Dumas napsal(a):
>  > Indeed, it seems to me that alien should depend on dpkg.
>  > I have packages available for dpkg, and other debian stuff (and
>  > debootstrap is already in fedora):
>  > 
>  > http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/dumas/fc-srpms/debian/
>  
>  I went through your spes file of dpkg and found, that you're doing some renaming
>  of executables, which could be already in fedora. But I thing, that if other
>  dpkg scripts want to use for example install-info, then it will use fedora's
>  install-info instead renamed install-info from dpkg package. So, are these
>  renamed executables needed in package? If not, we can make package without them. 
It doesn't hurt to have them, though. For example one would want to test
the debian install-info in parallel with the fedora texinfo one. It
would be harder to have dpkg use them during package install, but so far
installation of packages using dpkg isn't possible.

Also most of them are perl script so people can look at them, which is
nice.

--
Pat

[Zdenek Prikryl]

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>  I think you start with one-way version (if you like) and try to get
> the
>  missing links into Fedora as well and then switch your alien pkg to
>  rebuild and/or use the missing bits...
>  
>  Else, get the deb bits into Fedora and afterwards alien itself... Which
>  sounds for me like the best idea.... 
I think that second option is better.

- --
Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

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[Yaakov Nemoy]

On Dec 5, 2007 11:19 AM, Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hmm after little investigation I found, that convert deb, tgz, slp to
> rpm isn't
>  problem. But reverse conversion is big problem. For example, if I want to
>  convert rmp do deb, I have to have installed dpkg[-dev] and debhelper, which are
>  debian packages for creating deb files. All of those packages aren't in fedora
>  repos. 
Debian has the inverse, namely, it has all the packages to create RPMs.

+1 if the ability to turn RPMs into DEBs show up.  It could make
getting multi-distro support for Smolt easier.

-Yaakov

[Neal Gompa]

Though, will dpkg and the like be purposely crippled on Fedora like
rpm is on Debian systems? It probably would be a good idea to patch
dpkg and stuff to make sure they don't work as standard packagers, but
rather just helpers to alien, as RPM does on a Debian system. We want
to avoid the possibility of package jumbling.....

On Dec 5, 2007 12:58 PM, Yaakov Nemoy <loupgaroublond(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Dec 5, 2007 11:19 AM, Zdenek Prikryl <zprikryl(a)redhat.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  > Hmm after little investigation I found, that convert deb, tgz, slp to rpm isn't
>  > problem. But reverse conversion is big problem. For example, if I want to
>  > convert rmp do deb, I have to have installed dpkg[-dev] and debhelper, which are
>  > debian packages for creating deb files. All of those packages aren't in fedora
>  > repos.
>
>  Debian has the inverse, namely, it has all the packages to create RPMs.
>
>  +1 if the ability to turn RPMs into DEBs show up.  It could make
>  getting multi-distro support for Smolt easier.
>
>  -Yaakov
>
>
>  --
>  fedora-devel-list mailing list
>  fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>

[Patrice Dumas]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 06:51:44PM -0600, King InuYasha wrote:
>  Though, will dpkg and the like be purposely crippled on Fedora like
>  rpm is on Debian systems? It probably would be a good idea to patch
>  dpkg and stuff to make sure they don't work as standard packagers, but
>  rather just helpers to alien, as RPM does on a Debian system. We want
>  to avoid the possibility of package jumbling..... 
I have tried and dpkg fails when launched as a package manager, so I
think it is safe. Moreover it could be possible to use it to install in
a chroot, so crippling it is a bad idea in my opinion.

--
Pat

[Jef Spaleta]

On Dec 5, 2007 3:51 PM, King InuYasha <ngompa13(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Though, will dpkg and the like be purposely crippled on Fedora like
>  rpm is on Debian systems? It probably would be a good idea to patch
>  dpkg and stuff to make sure they don't work as standard packagers, but
>  rather just helpers to alien, as RPM does on a Debian system. We want
>  to avoid the possibility of package jumbling..... 
I would certainly concur with this.  Without making a judgment as to
the value of having alien or other alternative packaging tools in the
repository.. I would agree that if we are going to be putting dpkg and
friends into the repository that they come configured by default to
only act as helpers for using Fedora as a (re)packaging host.
Enabling functionality beyond that should be relatively difficult to
enable if not disabled entirely at buildtime.  There maybe some rather
clever unorthodox ways to make use of a fully capable dpkg in other
ways, but I don't want users accidental stumbling into those
situations just because they installed dpkg and followed a google'd
recipe article to have dpkg replace rpm on their Fedora system.

-jef

[Callum Lerwick]

On Thu, 2007-12-06 at 12:50 -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  I would certainly concur with this.  Without making a judgment as to
>  the value of having alien or other alternative packaging tools in the
>  repository.. I would agree that if we are going to be putting dpkg and
>  friends into the repository that they come configured by default to
>  only act as helpers for using Fedora as a (re)packaging host.
>  Enabling functionality beyond that should be relatively difficult to
>  enable if not disabled entirely at buildtime.  There maybe some rather
>  clever unorthodox ways to make use of a fully capable dpkg in other
>  ways, but I don't want users accidental stumbling into those
>  situations just because they installed dpkg and followed a google'd
>  recipe article to have dpkg replace rpm on their Fedora system. 
I once installed FC2 by hand, using debian's rpm, to hot-convert said
debian machine to Fedora. :)

And I kept notes:

http://www.haxxed.com/random/fedorainstall.txt

Its actually the oldest surviving Fedora install I have, and is still in
use. Its survived apt-rpm upgrades up to FC5 or so, and its been yum
upgrades since then. And survived most of the hardware being replaced
and a total re-purposing. It was originally a firewall box, but was
replaced by a (Linux based) wireless router and re-purposed as an
"HTPC"...

[Patrice Dumas]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 12:50:25PM -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  On Dec 5, 2007 3:51 PM, King InuYasha <ngompa13(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  > Though, will dpkg and the like be purposely crippled on Fedora like
>  > rpm is on Debian systems? It probably would be a good idea to patch
>  > dpkg and stuff to make sure they don't work as standard packagers, but
>  > rather just helpers to alien, as RPM does on a Debian system. We want
>  > to avoid the possibility of package jumbling.....
>  
>  I would certainly concur with this.  Without making a judgment as to
>  the value of having alien or other alternative packaging tools in the
>  repository.. I would agree that if we are going to be putting dpkg and
>  friends into the repository that they come configured by default to
>  only act as helpers for using Fedora as a (re)packaging host.
>  Enabling functionality beyond that should be relatively difficult to 
I don't think that we should do anything special with dpgk. Just
recompile it as is from upstream. If users are dumb and use dpkg to
install packages it is their responsibility. Just like when they do
./configure --prefix=/use --sysconfdir=/etc && make && make install
Or use CPAN. Our responsibility is integration, not being smart for 
dumb users.

>  enable if not disabled entirely at buildtime.  There maybe some
> rather
>  clever unorthodox ways to make use of a fully capable dpkg in other
>  ways, but I don't want users accidental stumbling into those
>  situations just because they installed dpkg and followed a google'd
>  recipe article to have dpkg replace rpm on their Fedora system. 
I can't see what is wrong with having 'dpkg replace rpm on their Fedora
system' if it works and it is what the user intends to do.

The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't use it
anyway. In %description, I put

  dpkg and dselect will certainly be non-functional on a rpm-based system
  because packages dependencies will likely be unmet.

It may admitedly be enhanced, to say something like

  dpkg and dselect will certainly be non-functional on a rpm-based system
  because packages dependencies will likely be unmet, and in any case 
  you are likely to trash your system if you install packages using
  dpkg.

--
Pat

[Kevin Kofler]

Patrice Dumas <pertusus <at> free.fr> writes:
>  The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't
> use it
>  anyway. In %description, I put
>  
>    dpkg and dselect will certainly be non-functional on a rpm-based system
>    because packages dependencies will likely be unmet.
>  
>  It may admitedly be enhanced, to say something like
>  
>    dpkg and dselect will certainly be non-functional on a rpm-based system
>    because packages dependencies will likely be unmet, and in any case 
>    you are likely to trash your system if you install packages using
>    dpkg. 
I think you should not only say what does not work, but also what does work, so 
people know why you're packaging them in the first place, e.g.:

dpkg and dselect are provided to allow converting between package formats with 
alien and installing Debian or Debian-based distributions in a chroot for 
virtualization. They are NOT intended to be used to manage packages within your 
Fedora installation, and attempting to use it that way will not work and may 
even break your system!

        Kevin Kofler

[Jef Spaleta]

On Dec 7, 2007 4:24 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus(a)free.fr&gt; wrote:
>  The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't
> use it
>  anyway. 
And when someone wants to put a dpkg-enabled tool in the distro that
does target casual users?  It's a slippery slope. We avoid
being on that slope by not having a fully functional dpkg on the system at all.


-jef

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 07:40:34AM -0900, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  On Dec 7, 2007 4:24 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus(a)free.fr&gt;
> wrote:
>  > The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't use it
>  > anyway.
>  
>  And when someone wants to put a dpkg-enabled tool in the distro that
>  does target casual users?  
What kind of tool are you thinking of? If we have tools that use dpkg
then there is a lack of proper integration. The solution is not to have
a non functional dpkg, but properly integrated packages.

>  It's a slippery slope. We avoid
>  being on that slope by not having a fully functional dpkg on the system at all. 
It is better if the dpkg we give is upstream dpkg, such that user can
use it in any way they want.

--
Pat

[Yaakov Nemoy]

On Dec 7, 2007 11:40 AM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Dec 7, 2007 4:24 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus(a)free.fr&gt;
> wrote:
>  > The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't use it
>  > anyway.
>
>  And when someone wants to put a dpkg-enabled tool in the distro that
>  does target casual users?  It's a slippery slope. We avoid
>  being on that slope by not having a fully functional dpkg on the system at all. 
Do you want to hassle most people that have a legitimate use just to
protect everyone else?  My level of tolerance is a one time warning,
and then for all security features to *get out of the way*.

Granted, we probably don't need apt-dpkg in Fedora, and synaptic is a
very bad idea in my book, (although I'm sure someone else would
disagree,) but it seems crazy to have to bend over backwards because
there are stupid people around.

-Yaakov

[Neal Gompa]

Not all people accidentally using dpkg would be stupid. Perhaps they are
used to a Debian based system, yadda yadda yadda... Anyways, upstream could
theoretically be used if a patch was submitted to detect platforms to enable
and disable functionality. For instance, on Debian, a dpkg binary would
function as the full package manager, with apt as repo manager. On a Fedora
machine, dpkg's platform checking would figure out it is fedora and
automatically initialize alien functionality, or just fail with an error
stating that if you want to use debian packages on this platform, use alien
to convert it to the native package format of the platform.

On Dec 8, 2007 8:24 PM, Yaakov Nemoy <loupgaroublond(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Dec 7, 2007 11:40 AM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta(a)gmail.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  > On Dec 7, 2007 4:24 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus(a)free.fr&gt; wrote:
>  > > The target for dpkg are not casual users, and casual users won't use
>  it
>  > > anyway.
>  >
>  > And when someone wants to put a dpkg-enabled tool in the distro that
>  > does target casual users?  It's a slippery slope. We avoid
>  > being on that slope by not having a fully functional dpkg on the system
>  at all.
>
>  Do you want to hassle most people that have a legitimate use just to
>  protect everyone else?  My level of tolerance is a one time warning,
>  and then for all security features to *get out of the way*.
>
>  Granted, we probably don't need apt-dpkg in Fedora, and synaptic is a
>  very bad idea in my book, (although I'm sure someone else would
>  disagree,) but it seems crazy to have to bend over backwards because
>  there are stupid people around.
>
>  -Yaakov
>
>  --
>  fedora-devel-list mailing list
>  fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>

[Patrice Dumas]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 09:55:14PM -0600, King InuYasha wrote:
>  Not all people accidentally using dpkg would be stupid. Perhaps they
> are
>  used to a Debian based system, yadda yadda yadda...  
Being used to something isn't an excuse for doing something wrong that 
could have been avoided by understanding what one is doing (and nobody
is stupid in my opinion, but some actions are stupid).

>  Anyways, upstream could
>  theoretically be used if a patch was submitted to detect platforms to enable
>  and disable functionality.  
That could be interesting, indeed. Though detecting the platform is
certainly not the way to go. What would be relevant would be to detect a
rpm database in the installation root. But then you should want to
modify autoconf/automake such that a generated makefile doesn't install 
in rpm managed directories when a rpm database is detected (or we are in
fedora).

>  For instance, on Debian, a dpkg binary would
>  function as the full package manager, with apt as repo manager. On a Fedora 
apt is completely different from dpkg (and the apt in fedora knows .rpm,
but not .deb). In fedora the repo manager may be smart, yum, apt and
certainly other that I don't know (not to mention that urpmi would
certainly work fine).

>  machine, dpkg's platform checking would figure out it is fedora
> and
>  automatically initialize alien functionality, or just fail with an error
>  stating that if you want to use debian packages on this platform, use alien
>  to convert it to the native package format of the platform. 
My guess is that alien doesn't need dpkg at all, but needs dpkg-deb
(which even seems to be a different binary). Still not a reason to
cripple dpkg.

--
Pat