What is the advantage of a dot-deb package ?
Authoritative source, reliable install, signed and secure content.. can we say that ?
Can you imagine the detail and "extras" in a Microsoft legal contract? where there is money on the table? now compare that to the quality, accuracy and care shown here.
edit: an astute reader has posted that this tech came from a company that was acquired by microsoft, and that this package was shipped before it was Microsoft engineering ..
...given that the environment is in a predictable state. if the package manager allows for such state to change, and depends on it, how can one be sure that a package installation/disintallation can be reliable and repeatable?
By making that a requirement of the package maintainer (Debian Developer / DD).
Debian's installer doesn't thwart errors, Debian Policy (DPM) does. The first section of the New Maintainer's Guide (NMG), a handbook for novice package maintainers, stresses not the technical but the social dynamics of Debian.
There are a few control points within the hierarchy, supreme of which is less the Debian Project Leader (DPL), but ftp-masters, the (somewhat anachronistically named) group of people who operate the repository download sites (mirrors), and are liable for various forms of legal sanction, varying with local jurisdiction.
Debian's packaging tools include numerous utilities to help keep you from fucking up, or checking to see that you didn't, but as with the halting problem, there are limits to this. Debian's governing structures: the Social Contract, Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), Code of Conduct, Constitution, and Policy, all serve not only to stare and accomplish the aims that technology alone cannot, but are an explicit recognition that technology alone is not an appropriate toolkit for all problems.
Some Debian packages or tools are maintained by teams (security, base, among others), R seems to be largely or wholly under Dirk Eddelbuettel:
Microsoft appear to be either providing freestanding packages or a third-party repo, which falls outside this framework, though it attempts to use the same package management tools. There are reasons this is dimly viewed by competent sysadmins.
TL;DR: If a DD maliciously or incompetently violates policy, they've committed a policy violation bug. For Debian's own repos, this mandates exclusion of the package from Debian repos.
Can you imagine the detail and "extras" in a Microsoft legal contract? where there is money on the table? now compare that to the quality, accuracy and care shown here.
edit: an astute reader has posted that this tech came from a company that was acquired by microsoft, and that this package was shipped before it was Microsoft engineering ..