Gentoo patches [was Re: [CLUE-Tech] Escape from RH 8.0]

[Jed S. Baer]

On 02 Mar 2003 22:33:06 -0700
Ed Hill <ed at eh3.com> wrote:

> Ok, I'm not trying to turn this into a flame war but heres a *practical*
> question: if you are given a closed-source binary-only set of RPMs with
> non-trivial dependencies (eg. NI's LabVIEW), how would you go about
> installing it on gentoo?  Have any of you solved this problem?
> 
> This is not a made-up or theoretical example.  I use LabVIEW on Linux on
> an almost daily basis and they ship it as a bunch of RPMs.  I'd like to
> try other distros but it seems like a lot of effort only to wind up with
> a system that will be difficult (?) to use in conjunction with our
> commercial apps.

The thing that might save you, is that RPMs are CPIO files.

http://www.google.com/search?q=rpm2cpio <- pick one

I haven't had huge successes unpacking RPMs and messing with them though.
I don't remember what happened when I tried it. I think cpio was being a
pain, something about not getting the files to wind up where I wanted
them. But, using rpm2cpio -> cpio, you should be able to get all the files
out.

IIRC, rpm2cpio is a Perl script. Not a very fancy one either.

jed
-- 
I wouldn't even think about bribing a rottweiler with a steak that
didn't weigh more than I do. -- Jason Earl