Re: RPMS??

[Gleef <dzol virtual-yellow com>]

edgehp@together.net wrote:
> Is there any plan/method for making new GNOME RPMs generally available?
> There have been several people who claim to have built them, merely
> looking for a distribution mechanism. Meanwhile, those of us without
> the time to dive in fully aren't able to contribute even bug reports.

The current plan/method for new GNOME RPMs is that Marc Ewing of RHAD
Labs seems to make a set of RPMs from most GNOME releases and puts them
on the FTP site.  The files then get distributed to the site's mirrors.

If every body who made an RPM were able to put it on the ftp site, you'd
have a big mess.  Most of the announced RPMs sound like one-shot deals
(RPM x was broken for me, so I fixed it and made a new one), and it's hard
to justify putting those on the FTP site, it would make the current RPM
problems harder to solve, not easier.

On the other hand, if someone wanted to MAINTAIN a regular RPM
distribution (that is, _each_ time a new version is released, they tie up
some machines building their new suite of RPMS), than a case could be made
for distributing it on the FTP site.  This would particularly be the case
if the distribution meets either of the following criteria:
  * It offers an environment other than the RHAD distribution (eg. a
    /opt/gnome installation, a sound-free version, a libc5/Caldera
    version, etc.)
  * It's better than the RHAD distribution in some measurable way

 
On Sun, 7 Feb 1999, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
> It seams extremely strange how RPM questions go for the most part
> unanswered.  How difficult is it to produce these an RPM as I know of
> several authors you release RPM's at the same time the release a new
> source code release.
> 
> Also why do questions about what to do with built RPMS go unanswered?

Probably the biggest reason is that most of the developers aren't using
RPMs, so they don't know the answer when someone has RPM problems.  That
leaves RPM help up to either the people making the RPMs or the people who
use them successfully.  

Another problem is there are so many different versions of the RPMs out
there.  I see the most problems with the RPMs that are shipped on RedHat
CD's.  The RedHatters here might correct me, but I see no evidence that
the person who makes those RPMs is even on this list.  The RPMs on the FTP
site are made by RHAD Labs (I think by Marc Ewing), but those lag behind
the current release by a bit.  Other RPMs are distributed by other people.

A third problem is the people with RPM trouble often don't give details.
A question like "I'm getting dependency errors, help me!" is far less
likely to get a response than "I'm running a <whatever> system, when I try
to install the gnome-foo package I get the following errors: .... Am I
doing something wrong, or is there a problem with the RPM?"


Best of Luck
-Gleef