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copied into the current directory, so that it is included with your fetchware
package:

    ./Fetchwarefile
    httpd-2.2.x
    httpd-2.2.x/README
    httpd-2.2.x/INSTALL
    ....

=back

This simple package format was chosen instead of using a native package format
such as a Microsoft C<.msi> package, Slackware format, rpm format, C<.deb>
format, and so on. Thanks to distros like Gentoo and Arch, there are even more
formats now. Also, each version of BSD has its own package format, and each
version of commerical UNIX has its own package format too. ...It was easier to
create a new format, then deal with all of the existing ones.

This custom package format is unique, bare bones, and retains all of the power
that installing the software from source manaully gives you.

=over

=item *

Simple, and retains backward compatibility with manual installation.

=item *

The package format includes the source code, so it can be recompiled if you
move the fetchware package to an architecture different than the one it was
compiled on.

=item *

You can specify whatever configure and build options you want, so you're not
stuck with whatever your distro's package maintainer has chosen.

=back

=head1 FAQ

=head2 How does fetchware's database work?

The design of fetchware's database was copied after Slackware's package database
design. In Slackware each package is a file in C</var/log/packages>, an
example: C</var/log/packages/coreutils-8.14-x86_64_slack13.37>. And inside that
file is a list of files, whoose names are the locations of all of the files that
this Slackware package installed. This format is really simple and flexible.

Fetchware's database is simply the directory C</var/log/fetchware> (on Unix when
run as root), or whatever File::HomeDir recommends. When packages are installed
the final version of that package that ends with C<.fpkg> is copied to your
fetchware database path. So after you install apache your fetchware database
will look like:

    ls /var/log/fetchware
    httpd-2.4.3.fpkg

It's not a real database or anything cool like that. It is simply a directory
containting a list of fetchware packages that have been installed. However, this
directory is managed by fetchware, and should not be messed with unless you are
sure of what you are doing.

=head2 What exactly is a fetchware package?

A fetchware package is a gziped tar archive with its file extension changed to
C<.fpkg>. This archive consists of the package that was downloaded in addition
to your Fetchwarefile. For example.

    tar tvf httpd-2.4.3.fpkg
    ./Fetchwarefile
    httpd-2.4.3/README
    httpd-2.4.3/...
    ...

See the section L<THE FETCHWARE PACKAGE> to see all of the cool things you can
do with them.

=head1 ERRORS

As with the rest of Fetchware, fetchware does not return any
error codes; instead, all errors are die()'d if it's fetchware's
error, or croak()'d if its the caller's fault.

=head1 CAVEATS

=over

=item WINDOWS COMPATIBILITY

Fetchware was written on Linux and tested by its author B<only> on Linux.
However, it should work on popular Unixes without any changes. But it has B<not>
been ported or tested on Windows yet, so it may work, or parts of it may work,
but some might not. However, I have used File::Spec and Path::Class to support
path and file manipulation accross all Perl-supported platorms, so that code
should work on Windows. I intend to add Windows support, and add tests for Windows
in the future, but for now it is unsupported, but may work. This is likely to
improve in the future.

=back

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<pkgsrc|http://www.pkgsrc.org/>, L<paco|http://paco.sourceforge.net/>,
L<porg|http://porg.sourceforge.net/>, L<slackbuilds|http://slackbuilds.org/>,
L<sbopkg|http://sbopkg.org/>, L<fpm|https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm>,
L<checkinstall|http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/>

=head1 AUTHOR

David Yingling <deeelwy@gmail.com>

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2016 by David Yingling.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

=cut