extension of lsb packages

[Erik Troan]

On Sat, 02 Mar 2002 17:10:03 -0800
"Dan Kegel" <dank at kegel.com> wrote:

> What line would go in /usr/share/magic to detect an lsb package
> (as opposed to an rpm package)?

We should steal the high bit of the "type" byte in the rpm lead structure (the first 16 of so bytes; don't recall exactly). There are just two legal values now (and since 1996) which differentiate binary and source. This will mean that LSB packages can't be installed by old versions of RPM or alien, but if we really need to know those tools ignore extensions as well.

> I personally feel that, even if `file` can distinguish lsb's from rpm's,
> lsb packages should end in .lsb.  After all, people depend on the .tgz
> and .gz suffixes, don't they?  The gzip command likes the .gz suffix,
> doesn't it?  Make obeys suffixes, doesn't it?

"should" I don't mind at all. "must" I mind terribly. Extensions provide semantic clues for people, and that's good. gzip and make are good examples of this. Both work with the common extensions people are used to, and both work equally well with nonstandard extensions.

Erik

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