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A comment on Building binary deb packages: a practical guide. Parent comment

Re:Building binary deb packages: a practical guide by NCommander on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:28AM (#23401563)
The best equivalent I can give is this is roughly like opening up a MSI file, and replacing its guts. It works but you're asking for a really fragile system in return.

What is the problem with distributing a tarball if you're sending binaries?

If you're making debs, you still need to make a Debian repo and sign it, and then you still have the problem your dependencies are fucked up or won't easily work across versions.

What are you trying to solve that a tarball or rsync can't?

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Re:Building binary deb packages: a practical guide by defanor on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @06:24AM (#23401865)
Not OP, but also packaging binaries into .debs, and the primary reasons for that (as opposed to using tarballs or rsync) are centralized package management, including dependency checks, and scripts to execute on installation (e.g., add system users).
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Re:Building binary deb packages: a practical guide by Mashimo on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:53AM (#23401697)
> What are you trying to solve that a tarball or rsync can't?

End users can install a deb with one click without having to know about where to put the files, or how to create a shortcut in menu.

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