[BusyBox] Using dpkg with busybox. (Debian packages)

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Sun Jun 5 01:38:51 UTC 2005


On Tuesday 31 May 2005 08:38 am, jhonnystecchino at interfree.it wrote:
> Hi.
> I have an embedded linux Arm system.
> I discovered that debian has made a port of it's package to arm.
> Compiling busybox, i found that busysbox support dpkg.
> My question is:
> Can i use dkpg to install to my system a debian package, as i work on a
> normal i86 machine?

I'm afraid the dpkg support in busybox is no longer maintained.  (Glenn 
McGrath used to do it, but he dropped it even before he became inactive.  We 
should probably mark it as such...)

The only way to find out if it works for you is to try it, but if it doesn't 
nobody here seems to have much interest in it.  Only debian really uses dpkg, 
most other systems seem to use RPM or something else.  (For embedded systems, 
lighter weight package solutions like ipkg are more popular, assuming you 
have a package management system at all and not just a hand-rolled root 
filesystem image in firmware.)

> Will the init system (which now is centred on busybox) 
> not work after i installed package with dpkg ? (for example because debian
> packages are not studied to run with busybox) It will be great if I can use
> debian package to get applications on my system.

I'd guess you have about as much chance of getting debian packages to install 
on your hand-rolled busybox based system as you have of getting them to 
install on Red Hat or SuSE.

And this is assuming you're using glibc, not uclibc.

Rob



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