Binaries in gentoo

corbis_demon · 12-23-2004, 02:16 AM

Hi,
I wanted to know if it ispossible to install binaries in Gentoo, like rpm,deb,etc.I tried looking up in the Gentoo documents,but it doesn't mention it.Please advise.

dalek · 12-23-2004, 02:39 AM

Why? Just emerge it. I'm not sure if you can do that or not. I did find this though.

* app-arch/rpm
Latest version available: 4.2
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 9,513 kB
Homepage: http://www.rpm.org/
Description: Red Hat Package Management Utils
License: GPL-2 LGPL-2

It may be doable.

Later

edit: corrected my bad typing.

slackMeUp · 12-23-2004, 09:35 PM

you can...

but then what's the point of Gentoo?

kesara · 12-30-2004, 10:25 AM

Yes you can..
But you can't emerge it.
Use rpm2targz (same kind of program available for deps also)
then untar it to /usr;-)

dalek · 12-30-2004, 11:00 AM

He can just emerge the rpm program, listed above in previous post, then he can, I guess, use the rpm commands just like in Redhat and Mandrake.

I'm still not sure why someone would want to do this though.

Later

vrln · 12-30-2004, 04:37 PM

My suggestion would be to stay clear of all binaries that aren't in portage. You'll mess up your system with .rpm:s sooner or later, they aren't meant to be used in Gentoo.

dalek · 12-30-2004, 10:56 PM

I agree. I have had RPMs mess my old Mandrake so it stands to reason Gentoo may be the same way. I'm still wondering why though. If you want to use RPMs, just install Redhat or Mandrake and be done with it.

Later

cs-cam · 12-31-2004, 05:43 PM

I can't remember but I had a look and I'm pretty sure emerging the rpm package doesn't set up the database and stuff so it doesn't really make rpms just work out of the box for you.

dalek · 12-31-2004, 09:22 PM

Actually if you emerge the RPM package, the database is a dependancy. It installs it too. Here's the list of what it installs, less what is already on my system.

Code:

root@smoker / # emerge -pv rpm

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  NS   ] sys-libs/db-3.2.9-r10  +doc +java 2,036 kB
[ebuild  N    ] dev-libs/elfutils-0.94-r1  +nls (-uclibc) 793 kB
[ebuild  N    ] app-arch/rpm-4.2  -debug +doc +nls +python 9,513 kB

Total size of downloads: 12,343 kB

root@smoker / #

sys-libs/db-3.2.9-r10 is I think the key to that. If he emerges rpm, and the dependancies, the it should work just like Mandrake and Redhat.

As easy as emerge is to use, I'm still not sure why a person would want to deal with RPMs. The only reason I can think of is if they do not want to compile the packages because of a slow machine. Of course, there are precompiled packages in Gentoo as well, from what I have read.

Anyway, it should still work.

Later

cs-cam · 12-31-2004, 10:38 PM

Yeah portage does have binary packages but I think they are few and far between. However if you just use the -k flag it'll check for a binary package and if it exists use it else compile from source.

Code:

# emerge -k <package_name>