README: rewrite & update

Signed-off-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>

3 files changed, 58 insertions, 26 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+# rpm2targz
+
+A simple tool to convert [Red Hat packages (RPMs)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager)
+to a more common [tar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_%28computing%29) format.
+
+* Homepage: https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/rpm2targz.git/
+* Bugs/patches/etc...: https://bugs.gentoo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Gentoo%20Linux
+
+## History
+
+Slackware has long provided a `rpm2tgz` tool to convert between Red Hat's RPM
+package format and Slackware's tgz package format.  It included a `rpm2targz`
+program.  Slackware doesn't really have a dedicated project site for it since
+it's part of the "base distro", so contributing changes back is difficult.
+
+Since unpacking RPMs w/out the `rpm` program is a generally useful function,
+Gentoo imported & forked it decades ago, and has since maintained a number of
+improvements & updates.  Gentoo has opted to call the package `rpm2targz` to
+help disambiguate and make it a little more clear that the focus is on generic
+tar's rather than Slackware's tgz packages.  It's unclear how many people
+picked up on this nuance ;).
+
+Gentoo's `rpm2tgz` is specifically not compatible with Slackware's version.
+Slackware's version is geared towards actually installing RPM's when your host
+host distro is actually Slackware, while Gentoo's is meant to just be a generic
+archive manipulation tool.  Basically we consider the "tgz" to be a short name
+for "tar.gz" rather than a package format by itself.
+
+The versioning has become desynced between the two projects.  Since Slackware
+just included it in the distro, Gentoo used the overall Slackware distro version
+when importing.  That's how we got:
+* [rpm2targz-8.0.ebuild](https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/?id=f4b34ca583b02f43962aa13fa7dc9384e2804cd8)
+* [rpm2targz-9.0.ebuild](https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/?id=8542b4a88931bd4fec2e29753ba3f014a19681ce)
+
+As the Gentoo version diverged from Slackware's, we added `.0.#g` to the end to
+differentiate itself (with the "g" being short for "Gentoo").  Gentoo has now
+moved on to the more common date-based version style since there's no point in
+staying in sync anymore.
+
+## Slackware Readme
+
+* http://www.slackware.com/config/packages.php
+* https://pkgs.org/download/rpm2tgz
+
+This package contains 'rpm2targz', a simple utility to convert Red Hat-style
+RPM packages into standard tar.gz archives.  Converted binary packages can then
+be installed/removed using the 'installpkg/removepkg' commands, or 'pkgtool'.
+
+It's advisable to at least examine the converted package with 'less' to make
+sure it won't do anything too crazy to your system.
+
+By default, rpm2targz will attempt to use "file" to detect source RPMS, and will
+put the contents into a subdirectory in the resulting package.  This may not be
+portable to other operating systems -- if you're trying to run rpm2targz on an
+OS that doesn't have a file that knows RPM types, and you care about this source
+RPM feature, you can compile and install David Cantrell's standalone getrpmtype
+utility.  The getrpmtype.tar.gz source archive can be found in Slackware's
+source tree in source/a/bin/.
diff --git a/rpm2targz.README b/rpm2targz.README
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-
-This package contains 'rpm2targz', a simple utility to convert Red Hat-style
-RPM packages into standard tar.gz archives.  Converted binary packages can then
-be installed/removed using the 'installpkg/removepkg' commands, or 'pkgtool'. 
-
-It's advisable to at least examine the converted package with 'less' to make
-sure it won't do anything too crazy to your system.
-
-By default, rpm2targz will attempt to use "file" to detect source RPMS, and will
-put the contents into a subdirectory in the resulting package.  This may not be
-portable to other operating systems -- if you're trying to run rpm2targz on an
-OS that doesn't have a file that knows RPM types, and you care about this source
-RPM feature, you can compile and install David Cantrell's standalone getrpmtype
-utility.  The getrpmtype.tar.gz source archive can be found in Slackware's
-source tree in source/a/bin/.
-
diff --git a/rpm2targz.README.Gentoo b/rpm2targz.README.Gentoo
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-We've accumulated too many patches/fixups/etc... to keep our sanity, so
-rpm2targz is now maintained in a git repo which we make releases from (so
-hopefully other distros can take advantage of things).
-
-You can find that repository here:
-http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/rpm2targz.git;a=summary
-
-The versioning schema is simple.  Just append '.0.#g' to the upstream version
-(which in this case is '9.0').  Increment the '#' over time.  The 'g' is short
-for Gentoo.  Awesome.