2 - Raspberry PI Community Projects

above all, to keep a history of the development of the system: one can find the exact moment
when each package has been installed or updated, and this information can be extremely useful
in understanding a recent change in behavior. Additionally, all versions being recorded, it is
easy to cross-check the information with the changelog.Debian.gz for packages in question,
or even with online bug reports.
5.5. Coexistence with Other Packaging Systems
Debian packages are not the only software packages used in the free software world. The main
competitor is the RPM format for Red Hat Linux and its many derivatives. Red Hat is a very
popular, commercial distribution. It is common for software provided by third parties to be
offered as RPM packages rather than Debian.
In this case, you should know that the program rpm, which handles RPM packages, is available
as a Debian package, so it is possible to use this package format on Debian. Care should be taken,
however, to limit these manipulations to extract the information from a package or to verify its
integrity. It is, in truth, unreasonable to use rpm to install an RPM on a Debian system; RPM uses
its own database, separate from those of native software (such as dpkg). This is why it is not
possible to ensure a stable coexistence of two packaging systems.
On the other hand, the alien utility can convert RPM packages into Debian packages, and vice
versa.
COMMUNITY
Encouraging the adoption of
.deb
If you regularly use the alien program to install RPM packages coming from
one of your providers, do not hesitate to write to them and amicably express
your strong preference for the .deb format. Note that the format of the package
is not everything: a .deb package built with alien or prepared for a version
of Debian different than that which you use, even for a derivative distribution
like Ubuntu, would probably not offer the same level of quality and integration
as a package specifically developed for Debian Squeeze.
$ fakeroot alien --to-deb phpMyAdmin-2.0.5-2.noarch.rpm
phpmyadmin_2.0.5-2_all.deb generated
$ ls -s phpmyadmin_2.0.5-2_all.deb
64 phpmyadmin_2.0.5-2_all.deb
You will find that this process is extremely simple. You must know, however, that the package
generated does not have any information on dependencies, since the dependencies in the two
packaging formats don't have systematic correspondence. The administrator, thus, must manually
ensure that the converted package will function correctly, and this is why Debian packages
thus generated should be avoided as much as possible. Fortunately, Debian has the largest collection
of software packages of all distributions, and it is likely that whatever you seek is already
in there.
Looking at the man page for the alien command, you will also note that this program also
98 The Debian Administrator's Handbook