[bt-devel] Mandrake, kde3, spec's, and rpm's.

[Brook Humphrey]

On Monday 27 May 2002 08:12 pm, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On Sunday 26 May 2002 11:15 am, Brook Humphrey wrote:
> > So any one that would like to help with the spec files please speak up. I
> > know there was at least one other person who worked with the postgres
> > people making rpm's that expressed a desire to help.
>
> Yes.  Sorry for the delay.  I have been *swamped* here lately.
>
> First, like I said earlier, I don't want to step on anyone's toes while
> trying to help. :-)  Having said that, I'm interested in seeing what you
> would like for me to work on.
>
> I would like to see more automation in the spec file in terms of picking
> the target distribution.  From what I understand of the process as it
> currently exists, the configure script can write out a spec file tailored
> to the dist upon which configure was run.  This seems at first blush to be
> a very good thing.
>
> And it is a very good thing -- until the day some linux distributor picks
> up Bibletime for their distribution.  I can only speak of Red Hat's build
> policy and techinques, but I'm pretty sure other distros use similar set
> ups.
>
> Red Hat has a build farm for nothing but rebuilding RPMs.  Those RPM's need
> to be completely rebuildable by using 'rpm --rebuild foo.src.rpm' and
> nothing else.

mandrake the same. Just to note I've been building my rpm's from scratch and 
hand editing the spec's for all the systems I build on. I've never even tried 
to use one that was done during the configure process. So at least the rpm's 
I release for mandrake and lycoris and occasionally redhat are done by hand.

>
> So, unless someone objects, my goal would be to get intelligence in the
> spec file to fathom what distro we're building on and set the various
> values accordingly.  Things such as %prefix and the OS version.  The
> Mandrake menus and a SuSEConfig script (if needed) should be determined
> entirely within the spec file.  As an RPM packager, I'm used to a simple
> 'rpm --rebuild' to get fresh binary RPMs from whatever package I need -- in
> fact, I install very little from prepackaged binary RPMS -- I almost always
> --rebuild them myself. Bibletime requires me to perform more work to
> rebuild currently.  I had been hand editing the spec file -- I didn't know
> about the configure trick.  I haven't yet had time to try it yet,
> unfortunately.
>
I don't object I would actually like your input.


> Next, I would want to see about the feasibility of dynamic linking sword
> and emitting a Requires: for sword of a particular version.  I haven't dug
> deep enough yet to see the reasons that it is the way it currently is set
> up -- I might very well be full of hot air! :-)  But I know a linux
> distributor such as Red Hat would require this.
>

We do it this way only for the rpm's at the bibletime sourceforge page. I 
understand the issues of both and that static linking is a pain for the 
distros as I've been on the mandrake dev team since about mandrake 5.3 or so.
The reason for this at the bibletime page is to make it easy to install the 
rpm's could be put up both static and dynamic.



> RPMs for each SWORD module don't fall under this list, but those would be
> very useful, IMO.
>

Yes I had an idea for a script to autmaticly update my local copy of sword and 
then search for updated modules, write a spec for it on the fly and then 
create the needed rpm's.

> Since you've already split the documentation into a separate tarball,
> subpackaging the docs isn't needed.
>
> Bibletime is a pretty straightforward package to, uh, _package_.  I'm just
> trying to understand why the spec file is structured the way it is -- as
> I'm sure there is a rational reason why it is the way it is.
>

We were looking at ease of use for the end user not at what a distro might do 
for us. As for the rest I know it needs to be rewrote I just don't have the 
time.


> Brook, barring automatic configuration of some of those values, I have
> found that conditional defines work well:
> %{?!prefix:%define prefix /opt/kde}
> does this: 'If prefix is not already defined, then define prefix to be
> /opt/kde'.  What this allows is command line defines:
> rpm --define 'prefix /usr' --rebuild bibletime.src.rpm
> to rebuild with a different prefix.  This sort of thing is not nearly as
> optimal as automatic configuration, though.
>
> But I'm still interested in the rationale for the existing spec file.
>
> God bless.

Submit your changed spec file. I do much better when I can actually see the 
thing. Hope my explanations help some. Also I'm still learning about spec 
writing even though I've been doing it for 3 or 4 years now. Allot of the 
specs I do are for servers and differ from this because I only build them for 
mandrake. After thinking about it this is the only package I do for multiple 
distro's so that Might explain a few other things.

-- 
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                                      Brook Humphrey           
        Mobile PC Medic, 420 1st, Cheney, WA 99004, 509-235-9107        
http://www.webmedic.net, bah@webmedic.net, bah@linux-mandrake.com   
                                 Holiness unto the Lord
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