[news.eclipse.tools.gef] Re: How to fetch GEF and build using command li

[Alex Blewitt <alex_blewitt@xxxxxxxxx>]

RPM is RedHat Package Manager. It's an intsall format for Linux systems that was pioneered by RedHat and now adpoted by some other distributions for distributing binary code that can just be downloaded and installed (somewhat similar to one of the Windows installer programs like ZeroG installer).

dpkg files (pioneered by Debian) and the helper apt-get and many other apt tools are another way of distributing binaries, which other distributions use.

IBM tends to go with the RPM format, presumably because RedHat has significant branding in the enterprise marketspace.

Note there's nothing specific about either of these to Linux; but that's where they started. I am using apt-get on my Mac box courtesy of the Fink project, which uses dpkg files to distribute Mac-compiled binaries of popular open source projects.

In any case, one of the few TLAs that has nothing to do with Eclipse :-)

Alex.