RPMs (and packages in general) do (at least) two things:
- place new software in defined locations on your system
- automate configuration of your software
It all makes anything packaged more attractive to a wider audience. It's not just newbies. I like packages because they save me time and trouble. I still get into lots (too many) tarballs.
Perhaps if Unicon had RPM's it might get picked up by RedHat and/or some of the other distros. This would be a very good thing (IMHO).
One of the "problems" with packaging Unicon is sporadically acquires new features. Thus, probably one would want the latest version (for Linux, anyway).
Someone would have to maintain the RPMs. It would have to along some kind of release schedule or it will get insane. But this just sounds like business as usual for any project.
My suggestion was to make a "dummy" RPM that has installation of the CVS client as a prerequisite; the "automated configuration" function of the package would then automatically check out the CVS sources, prompt the user for certain details (e.g., which architecture to build for, and perhaps where to install the system), and build and install the sources.
Clever idea, bit of cheat though :-). I suspect that for the wider audience this may open them to a degree more instability. It might be worthwhile. I think I'd like to know a lot more about RPMs and RPM practice before trying this. Do you know if any other projects do this?
Some day I would like to figure out how to do this for Debian packages too.
Too bad there isn't an rpm2deb or deb2rpm. Or even a meta package that could generate both rpm's and deb's.
David Gamey wrote:
A couple of quicks question to the list.
1. I am rebuilding a system on RH9 and will be putting the latest Unicon on from sources. If anyone has been down this path before and can advise me on any problems, it would be appreciated.
2. A while back there was a discussion on RPMs. I believe at the time the RPMs were out of date and being pulled. I believe there is some value in having current RPMs and if there are none now, I may look at this. Anyone working on this? Or have material that would be a good starting point?
Thanks, David
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