Re: make rpm packages for all linux distributions

In comp.os.linux.misc John Hasler <john@xxxxxxxxxx>:
Keith Keller writes:
The pedantic answer is that alien builds a Slackware .tgz package, not an
RPM.

The version of alien distributed by Debian can convert between any of Red
Hat rpm, Debian deb, Stampede slp, Slackware tgz, and Solaris pkg file
formats. Any of these formats can be the input and any can be the output.

Indeed, my version does the same.

The practical answer is that I've found that rpms converted by alien to
tgz don't work well...

You often have to fix up the dependencies by hand.

Had no problems so far and found it pretty useful, for rare cases
you can't find an rpm but some deb package is available.

...either provide source code with a standard autoconf build process, or
build a native package for each of the distros you wish to support.

That is the optimal solution.

Of course, but might be troublesome to support depending on the
number of distro. However, the OP is just providing for suse and
redhat, which should be fairly easy. Already added some info to
the thread on how to go about it using rpm.

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: make rpm packages for all linux distributions
    ... Hat rpm, Debian deb, Stampede slp, Slackware tgz, and Solaris pkg file ... Any of these formats can be the input and any can be the output. ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: Configuring Kpackage
    ... How do i configure Kpackage to install debian packages. ... allows you to convert .deb to .rpm and a few other formats. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)