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xealits
Asked: 2013-05-10 15:28:14 +0800 CST

Should I install via alien or just convert and then use dpkg?

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The question is simple (maybe too simple): what does alien do when with the -i option? Does it use dpkg to install the package?

dpkg (or apt-get) manages packages, tracks when, where and how they are installed, dependencies also.. So I would like to install a package via the managing system to have these advantages. Does alien -i do it for me?

PS googled for an answer -- not that lucky today, man alien doesn't say much on -i.

package-management

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    IMO you should be very careful with alien as the packaging of say .rpm and .deb are very different. Alien can sometimes convert packages, but sometimes there can be significant problems and sometimes say Fedora libs conflict with Debian / Ubuntu libs. Also your converted package can overwrite system files without warning (obviously as it is installing packages). Last, pre/post install scripting is somewhat different from .rpm and .deb and Alien can not always convert the scripts.

    IMO you are much better off either installing from source code using checkinstall

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CheckInstall

    Although occasionally checkinstall can have similar issues.

    Personally I read the README and usually just compile form source into /usr/local

    ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
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