Re: Moving to a more distro/host agnostic setup for the canonical spec files.

[Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc linuxweasel com>]

On Fri, 2003-01-10 at 19:58, Daniel Ruoso wrote:
> Em Sex, 2003-01-10 ās 10:14, Yanko Kaneti escreveu:
> > On Fri, 2003-01-10 at 12:28, Daniel Ruoso wrote:
> > > I think that being rpm-oriented may not be a good policy.
> > 
> > If having a spec file means rpm-oriented then we've been rpm-oriented
> > for quite some time now. My post was defintely not about changin that
> > but rather making the current spec setup more general.
> 
> And that is what I am talking about. I think gnome should not stick to
> any distro or packaging format. (I think I agreed with you, in part)
>  
> > > One reason is that the rpm specification does not include all the
> > > features that other packaging systems do. i.e. debian.
> > 
> > I am not aware of any fundemental problems with rpm that make it less
> > suitable than other solutions. After all LSB is rpm based.
> 
> Well, i think the flamewar deb x rpm is not the case here. After all LSB
> is not consensual.
> 
> > > The question is. Why not using simple tar.gz in the gnome distribution
> > > and each distro has one package manager (since the debian package
> > > manager will not be the same guy that  build the rpm package)
> > 
> > We already have that, sort of. My idea is that we could do a tad better
> > and make the lives of the people that build things themselves a bit
> > easier. In addition to streamlining the process and avoiding duplication
> > whenever possible. Nowdays everyone and his brother maintain spec
> > repositories with each having its own set of silly gimmicks. 
> 
> I think the distributions are responsible for packaging the software in
> their format. This means that gnome packages won't define much as a
> gnome package, since gnome is not a distro.

First off, all the world is not a 'distro'.  All the world isn't even
Linux.

> But the gnome software are splitted into packages (and that is not rpm
> or deb). A gnome package is a piece of software. So, what standards we
> should apply to gnome packages? Here is an example list (a proposal).
>  - The use of tar.gz for source distribution

This doesn't have anything to do with the GNOME Packaging Project,
although GNOME distributes source code as both .tar.gz and .tar.bz2
archives.

>  - gnome packages are in source format. Binary formats are
> responsability of linux distros.

No.  Again, All the World Is Not Linux.  GNOME isn't even targeted at
Linux, it's targeted at any Unix or Unix like OS.  The GNOME Packaging
Project was started -specifically- to make a binary distribution of
GNOME that runs on as many platforms as possible, without any 'vendor'
changes.

>  - The gnome packages should follow FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standards)

This doesn't really involve us.  This project is to create binary
packages of GNOME that run on various platforms.  We need to follow the
conventions of that platform, not the FHS.

>  - Dependencies should be documented in some generic format (to be used
> by distro packagers)

Sounds good, but this isn't actually part of the GNOME Packaging Project
either.  Check out the "dependency diagram" at
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/notes/

> And this policies should not include definitions for rpmmacros, since
> this is distro specific.

Yeah, they are distribution specific, and they have to be.  But since
this is a -packaging project-, that's OK.  More in some other emails.
	Greg

> -- 
> Gregory Leblanc <gleblanc linuxweasel com>