SUSE Users: Build your RPM! (was Re: More problems with Suse 6.1 - Solved!

[Paul E. Johnson]

Alex Lancaster wrote:
> 
> What would be *really* nice is for one of you SuSE users out there, to
> build SuSE-specific RPMs, that we can put up on the ftp site.
>
As I drove home today I was wondering why I don't coax a SUSE user to
build their own rpms. Alex beat me to the suggestion.

  Building rpms is quite easy. All you have to do is take the src.rpm
file I have, and install it, then possibly edit the spec file.  They key
is to use the proper set of patches for your version of glibc.  The
swarm for redhat 6.0 is a glibc2.1 release with some vitally required
patches.  The spec fill will need only minimal changes, probably only to
the configure line.  Then at the command line type "rpm -ba swarm.spec"
(or whatever the spec file is called) and it will build you new rpms. 

I do see some problems naming of rpms for different distributions
because it might become confusing. We might have to introduce the term
"redhat" and "suse" into the name of the package itself, which seems an
ugly prospect.  Or the SUSE version, at minimum, must bear the name of
the distribution that makes it obvious.

I'm not quite so negative as Alex about the possibility that a single
RPM can serve both distributions.  It is not pure luck that you can
"fiddle" suse to make the rpm work.  There are a lot of similarities.

I'd like to try to understand better the problems and see if a common
RPM binary might not work.  Some of the problems we faced are dissolving
themselves.  For example, on RedHat egcs and gcc are now the same thing,
and so there is no more need for that fussy distinction.  When we build
new RPMS, I'll get rid of it.  Perhaps if a suse user tells me what they
see concerning egcs and gcc and xpm-devel when they do "rpm -qa" I'd
understand better. (don't send to whole mailing list, just me). 

 
-- 
Paul E. Johnson                         email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science              http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                    Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                  FAX: (785) 864-5700

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