On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 19:53 +0000, Sebastian Rahtz wrote: > > I am not sure what Martin means, but my take on this > is that Norbert Preining has put a LOT of effort into a script > which builds Debian packages from the TeX Live > master tree. It would be well worth trying to write a different > output module on that to generate an RPM instead of a DEB. > Maybe it wouldn't work, but it would be good to try. >
I've been packaging rpm's since 2000 when I did it for a commercial .com selling a Red Hat based LAMP. The automatic tools for building an rpm can sometimes produce adequate rpms, but each one has to then be checked. For example, perl has a package that builds perl rpms from CPAN - I don't know of a single distribution that actually uses it, because it ends up being less work to just build them manually. Sometimes generated rpms can be used as a decent starting point, but I have not yet seen a tool that does a good job of consistently producing quality packaging. One of the things they often get wrong is directory ownership. A package should cleanly un-install, meaning that when it is removed, no unowned directories should be left behind. It also should not own directories that belong to packages it depends upon. Configuration files need to be properly marked as such, some files need to be ghosted, etc. - so any package auto generated needs to be checked anyway, at which point you might as well just write it from scratch. The hardest part about making an rpm is reading the README file, and sometimes the .sty file, to make sure the License field is correct (the CTAN pages are sometimes incorrect).
