RPM and DEB compatibility

[Jussi Lehtola]

On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 08:46 -0600, Rallias UberNerd wrote:
> I recently took the time to make a really cool special self-made distro of
> Linux. However, I want to be able to use both RPM servers and DEB servers
> to update things with. I don't wish to use the one special piece of
> software allready out their to turn RPM's into DEB's, because then I can
> only use DEB servers to update easily, and I want both to have equal
> precidence (the higher version wins out). Am I being impossible or is
> their a way to do this?
> 
> Basically, I am wanting to have the shell determine the version of the
> software installed and use the newer version, I suppose. I am currently
> using BASH, but have SH, KSH, and CSH installed on my system.


Sounds a lot like you're eager to shoot yourself in the foot. Binary
debs and rpms are compiled for a specific software combo, and you
shouldn't/can't intermix them. If you're using a Fedora type
distribution, it's build on rpms.

You can, however, use apt in both dpkg and rpm based distributions,
however apt-rpm has been lacking in functionality at least in the past
when compared to yum.

If your packages are trivial, architecture independent packages
(consisting of scripts and config files, without any dependencies), you
can make a dpkg/rpm and then convert it to rpm/dpkg with 'alien'.

If you need dependencies, then you probably need to make separate
packages for both (and maybe specific RPMs for specific distributions
and their versions, too). YMMV

-- 
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola at fedoraproject.org