[wplug] I'm a Linux whimp (need kernel help)

[Chester R. Hosey]

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 16:40 -0400, Poyner, Brandon wrote:
> > > What's a standard format?  CPIO is a pretty common archive 
> > > format.  I
> > > tried and failed to find an RFC for a "standard" for packaging an
> > > installable binary and documentation.
> > 
> > I don't believe that RPM _is_ CPIO -- thus the need for 
> > rpm2cpio. I'd be
> > quite happy if RPM files could be manipulated directly with cpio.
> 
> RPMs contain a compressed cpio archive, but they also have more than the
> cpio archive.  Hence why you need rpm2cpio.. to skip over the other
> parts and get directly to the cpio archive.  Here's a doc describing in
> painful detail the RPM file format. 
> 
> http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/s1-rpm-file-format-rpm-file-format.html

Ick. It's a bloody archive! The document describes four sections:

1) Lead -- no longer used
2) Signature -- verification
3) Header -- tags and attributes
4) Archive -- contents

Something similar to Debian's tarball-in-an-archive format could easily
provide this functionality. Bundle the archive in a .tar.gz file, and
provide the information stored in #2 and #3 in files stored within th
archive.

Basically the archive would consist of:

sig.bin (section #2)
header.bin (section #3)
data.cpio

One could 'ar' it all up, and manipulate the whole thing with standard
tools instead of the current mess. I can't blame them for trying, but
this is exactly the sort of thing for which a user-friendly design
exists, but hostile design choices were made. I understand that RPM
probably predates the more friendly Debian way, but there's no reason
why a change couldn't occur, especially one towards a more "open"
format.

If wishes were grapes, well, I'd have a lot of grapes. Maybe wishes
should be nonperishable.

Thanks for the reference!

Chet