Re: Where to put spec files...

["R.I.P. Deaddog" <maddog linuxhall org>]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Chris Chabot wrote:

> >Suppose you have gtkhtml:
> >Mandrake has gtkhtml, libgtkhtmlx, and libgtkhtml-devel (I may be off a bit,
> > but you get the idea)

Mandrake is using the library policy used in debian packages:
For example, gtkhtml/libgtkhtml19/libgtkhtml19-devel.

> >RH-style has gtkhtml and gtkhtml-devel. Thus upgrading to these packages
> >will cuase a conflict between gtkhtml and libgtkhtmlx, and between
> >gtkhtml-devel and libgtkhtml-devel. So you'ld have to uninstall those first,
> >screwing up your database.

That's obvious, installing binary RPM from one distro in other
RPM-based distro is not guaranteed to work at all...

>  From what i know, a lot of package names in mandrake are still quite 
> compatible.. (this also since they want to be compatible with binary 
> distributions of oracle, ibm-db2, etc..). Also, if they started using 
> 'random' names for packages, we would have a seperate problem .. ie, if 
> a user finds a bug in 'libgtkhtmlx', what component in bugzilla does he 
> use ? Libgtkhtml? (aka gtkhtml2 in cvs) or gtkhtml ? (aka gtkhtml 1.4 
> edition).

As stated above, that's not 'random' name... but of course it's not 100%
following Redhat's name, in order to preserve maximum compatibility
between various library versions.

> Now what if they decide to rename gcc to xxc and our build scripts fail?
> 
> In other words, once you start adjusting your baseline for these 
> (posible, not yet confirmed) 'incidents', you start down a slippery road 
> that leads to a very high maintanance and very confusing situation.

'incidents'? What I think is, SuSE and Mandrake are not renaming
packages 'accidentally'.

> Also, since no distrobution has gnome2 packages in them yet (well, some 
> beta ones maybe in redhat 7.x, which i put in the 'Obsoletes' fields of 
> the .spec files i recently made), if we offer them a good vendor neutral 
> standard to follow, i am sure they wont have a problem with that.

Agreed, though the solution may not be easy to find.

> Ofcource the higher goal for any distrobution is to make sure the user 
> only uses the quality assured distro packages, however if a user wants 
> to use bleeding-edge packages, he should be able to do so, without 
> severey breaking his system. (which would lead to greater problems 
> obviously)

If Gnome installation breaks KDE or other window managers or even X11,
then it would be too much; but I guess if people are choosing to run
Gnome 2 desktop, then they would already bear in mind that they are
willing to break their Gnome 1.4, either temporarily or permanently.

> I'd say, lets make our own naming convention (ie 
> "base_package_name-major.minor.sub.RPKFORMAT", and use the redhat / 
> gnome style naming for our libraries (gconf2, gnome-vfs2, etc) This way 

Do I get it wrong... redhat style and gnome style are a little bit
different now? (e.g gconf2/gnome-vfs2 etc for Redhat, and gconf/gnome-vfs
for Gnome)

> we are compatible with the highest percentage of people, and have a 
> clear standard to submit to SuSe & mandrakem which do not have to break 
> their old releases and base system designs.

Agreed again, if any clean solution is proposed.

Abel

> Ofcource this will only work if we as the GPP all agree on it, and make 
> sure gnome follows the standards we set ;-)