I don't work for Mandrake, this is just my $0.02...
On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Matthew Campbell wrote:
> 1. Why do all Mandrake RPM's have "mdk" in the release number?
Why not? It certainly helps when using rpmfind.net to see which packages
are "Mandrake native", so to speak. Since there's absolutely no harm in
this and it in no way conflicts with the practices of other RPM-based
distributions, why not do it?
> 2. I know that the files in source RPM's are recompressed using bzip2
> in order to save space. However, I've read that one of the main
> concepts of RPM is "pristine source"; that is, in the source RPM we
> include the source exactly as we downloaded it, along with any patches
> necessary to make it work. Also, it's helpful if the "Source:" field
> in a spec file contains a valid URL for the source file, so people
> know where the source came from. If you recompress the source file
> with bzip2, then either you have to take out the URL, or the URL
> becomes invalid, unless the original source is actually available in
> bzip2-compressed format. Perhaps this is more of a philosophical
> issue than anything else.
Well, since it actually affects the amount of free space on your HD, it's
more than a philosophical issue, it has practical impact. Changing this
would cost us more HD space, so what would be the practical benefit and
does this benefit outweigh the loss?
> 3. Why is spec-helper run automatically by rpm during the package
> building process? Why is spec-helper needed at all? It seems
> redundant in light of the brp-* scripts stored under /usr/lib/rpm,
> though I guess one difference is that spec-helper uses bzip2 and
> brp-compress uses gzip. My main concern is that spec-helper could
> cause compatibility problems when building non-Mandrake packages on a
> Mandrake system, since spec-helper compresses the man pages
> automatically and non-Mandrake packages may not be expecting this.
I can't imagine why any package (other than "man") would be affected by
this, it would be helpful if you could supply a list of packages that
this does in fact cause compatibility problems for.
> 4. I notice that in Mandrake change log entries, the package version
> number is at the end of the entry's header. Does this cause any
> trouble when building Mandrake source packages on a non-Mandrake
> system, or when installing Mandrake binary packages on a non-Mandrake
> system?
Not that I know of. What problems have you had?
> I guess what I don't like about these things is that they're
> deviations from standard package building practices
Could you provide a URL for the established standard?
> and the standard version of RPM.
That's simply untrue: none of these are in any way a deviation from
the standard version of RPM. All of these are completely and fully
compatible with RPM, and wouldn't be possible if RPM were not in fact
designed to allow exactly these very things.
> Mandrake and Red Hat can compete in areas like
> installation and the user interface, but I think cooperation is
> important in the area of software packaging.
What specific problems have you had that are caused by the problems you
mentioned that would be solved by either RedHat or Mandrake doing things
differently? I've never had a single problem using Mandrake packages on
RedHat or RedHat packages on Mandrake, and I've done both frequently. So
as far as I can tell, they're cooperating just fine. I'd rather both
companies concentrate on solving existing problems instead of nonexistent
ones.
