[ale] Alien error

[A LeDonne]

On 3/8/06, joh6nn <joh6nn at hotpop.com> wrote:
> sorry, didn't follow you the first time around.
>
> took me a second to figure out that the "LANG=C" prefix was extraneous,
> but here's what i get if i run "rpm -qp --queryformat %{SUMMARY}
> gaim.rpm" from the terminal:
>
> gaim.rpm: read manifest failed: Success
>
>
> i'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Well, the LANG=C is not necessarily extraneous; it sets an environment
variable for the command (depending on your shell). The idea is to set
the locale to C for executing the rpm command.

Looking at the Alien code again, it's testing the return value of the
rpm command for safety. If you try that rpm command line again, then
do
echo $?

I'll bet you get an answer that is not 0. ($? is the exit status of
the previous command.) Alien requires the rpm command to exit with a
status 0 in order to know it was successful and continue. Someone else
will need to jump in to help interpret whatever $? turns out to be.

And any exit message that ends with "failed: Success" is a real winner
in my book.

Good luck.

-A