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xenomorph — Shapeshift between package formats

A tool that converts software packages to work from one package manager to the next, originating as a rewrite of the classic alien script.

Currently, the tool supports converting between:

  • .deb packages — used by dpkg, prevalent in Linux distributions (distros) derived from Debian and Ubuntu;
  • .rpm packages — used by rpm, found in Red Hat-derived distros such as RHEL, CentOS, openSUSE, Fedora and more;
  • LSB packages — used by Linux Standard Base and are basicaly .rpm packages
  • .tgz packages — used by Slackware Linux
  • .pkg packages — used by Solaris

How is xenomorph different from alien?

xenomorph is written in Rust and therefore does not rely on a Perl interpreter in order to function, and can attain native level speeds comparable to tools written in other native languages. It also has far more robust error handling and avoids many silent failure states that alien can face, as well as a much more extensible and well-documented framework for other packaging formats.

xenomorph, however, does not aim to be a complete drop-in replacement of alien. Notably, support for .slp packages — once used by Stampede Linux — has been removed, since Stampede Linux had been effectively dead for over twenty years with little surviving records of its package format. xenomorph's CLI interface, while currently compatible with alien, may change in the future, and so will the packages it generates.

Known Issues

  • Names need to be mapped from .rpm to .deb - in particular, .deb package names cannot contain uppercase letters, whereas .rpm packages have no such restriction.

  • Currently dependencies from .deb files are not processed, which means .rpm packages converted from .deb packages may not install correctly.

As well as issues that have been carried over from alien:

  • Relocatable conffiles, partially relocatable packages, and multipart packages are not yet supported

  • RPM ghost files are not yet supported

  • In Slackware packages, descriptions in install/slack-desc may be ignored

License

xenomorph is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

© 2023–2024 Leah Amelia "pluie" Chen