Distro update methods [was RE: market continues to dive!]

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Fowler [mailto:jfowler at westrope.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 3:12 PM
> To: Michael; Brian Densmore
> Cc: kclug at kclug.org
> Subject: RE: Distro update methods [was RE: market continues to dive!]
> 
> 
> Usually you have to rebuild the rpm in order to add a 
> configure option that
> requires rebuilding the binaries from source. There is no 
> other way since all
> that comes in an rpm package is the binary files, 
> documentation, and possibly
> some example config files. If all rpms were binary+source 
> then reconfiguring
> packages would be easier, but the package size would be huge. 
> Think of rpms as a
> binary package installer, that only installs what is 
> generated at `make install`
> time. Everything else is done with the source rpm.
> 
> It's not that hard to rebuild srpms and add configure 
> options. Just download the
> srpm file, find out what the configure option you need and 
> use rpm to rebuild
> from source.
> 
> rpm -bb --with=xml php-something.src.rpm
> 
> And after it's all compiled, your new rpm is placed in 
> /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386
> (or whatever you arch is)
Hunh!? ;')

This is exactly why Linux needs a ports system, like portage.
It does all this dependency checking, configuration, 
source options, etc. for you. Linux systems are just
too large and complex anymore to be able to know every tweak that 
may need to be done to install a package. 

I think I'll stick with gentoo.
Of course gentoo's portage could easily do precompiled packages.
[and does like Netscape and Adobe's evil proprietary reader]. Maybe 
I should put out a precompiled gentoo build on my website, see if anyone
pulls it down.

Brian

Brian