Re: RPM and tarballs

Tony Nelson wrote:
At 10:39 AM -0500 5/8/07, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
...
In the long run, I feel it is worth the extra effort to build an RPM
for the tarball package. It makes managing the packages on your
system easier. That is what packaging systems were designed for in
the first place.

ISTM that a tool could make a reasonable RPM from a tarball, as long as the
tarball doesn't have an install script, as all that is needed is the list
of files. Checkinstall is more dynamic and dangerous than just looking at
the output of tar -t, in order to be able to handle install scripts. Are
there tools to make RPMs from tarballs that I haven't found?

For that matter, RPM could install tarballs directly, if given an install
root. RPM could even usually tell when a file conflict could be treated as
a config file and do the .rpmnew or .rpmsave thing. Perhaps in the history
of RPM there is a reason this did not happen, or existed and was removed?

As far as RPM installing from source, I don't believe it ever could
do that. At one time, rpm and rpmbuild were combined into one
program, but that only allowed you to build and install RPMs with
the same command.

I am not sure that trying to build the option of installing from a
tarball is a good idea. Even though it would involve extra steps,
improving the tools that will create a .spec file from a tarball,
building the RPM, and then becoming root to install it still looks
like a better way to do it. It gives you an extra chance to look at
just what you are installing. (I can picture a few ways to hide
nasty scripts inside a make file, or in the RPM install scripts.)

Mikkel
--

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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