Cross Distro .specs

[James Ogley <james usr-local-bin org>]

A while ago (oooh, almost a year now I think) there was some discussion
about how to go about producing .spec files that would work without
modification across different RPM based Linux distros.

At the time, the solution that was on the table was using the "--with
foo" flag for rpmbuild, but there was some discussion recently on the
openSUSE build service list that touched on this, and there may be a
solution that only involves doing some %define statements in the .spec
itself, so nothing additional needs to be passed on the command line.

I've updated my notes on this on lgo[1] accordingly, but haven't changed
the sample .spec included yet.  (Note also that my packaging machine is
currently out of action, so I've not been able to test this yet)

I wondered whether doing something like this across the platform/desktop
might be able to form part of Elijah's "Revive the GPP" idea for the
Summer of Code[2]?

James

[1] http://live.gnome.org/CrossDistroSpecFiles
[2] http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2006/Ideas
-- 
James Ogley
james usr-local-bin org http://usr-local-bin.org
Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms
Help end poverty: http://oxfam.org.uk/imin