alien (software)
| alien | |
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| Basic data
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| Maintainer | Joey Hess |
| Current version | 8.95 (October 16, 2016) |
| operating system | Linux |
| programming language | Pearl |
| category | Packet conversion |
| License | GPL-2 + |
| http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/ | |
alien is a Unix - program which is used to convert various packet - file formats used. Alien is available as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL, Version ≥2) . It was originally written by the Debian developer Christoph Lameter . The code for converting RPM format to Debian format comes from a software called Martian (English for Mars residents ), which is also reminiscent of the name Alien (English for foreigner, extraterrestrial ).
It handles conversions from and to Red Hat's RPM , Debians deb , Stampedes slp, Slackware tgz and Solaris ' pkg format. Packages can also be installed automatically after creation. Installation scripts embedded in the packages can also be converted, but this is error-prone. The format conversion is generally not lossless or can occasionally lead to faulty packets, which is why a more detailed check of the generated packets is recommended after each call of alien.