> practices
>
>
> 1. Why do all Mandrake RPM's have "mdk" in the release number?
>
to make it known that it is a Mandrake RPM i guess ;)
actually this does not cause problems RH will happily accept them.
> 2. I know that the files in source RPM's are recompressed using bzip2
> in order to save space. However, I've read that one of the main
> concepts of RPM is "pristine source"; that is, in the source RPM we
> include the source exactly as we downloaded it, along with any patches
> necessary to make it work. Also, it's helpful if the "Source:" field
> in a spec file contains a valid URL for the source file, so people
> know where the source came from. If you recompress the source file
> with bzip2, then either you have to take out the URL, or the URL
> becomes invalid, unless the original source is actually available in
> bzip2-compressed format. Perhaps this is more of a philosophical
> issue than anything else.
yes the url will become invalid, but i guess most users are smart enugh to
figure that out..
i.e. if the program is called foo.tar.gz but because of mandarke it has been
bzipped, then just do
ls foo.tar*
>
> 3. Why is spec-helper run automatically by rpm during the package
> building process? Why is spec-helper needed at all? It seems
> redundant in light of the brp-* scripts stored under /usr/lib/rpm,
> though I guess one difference is that spec-helper uses bzip2 and
> brp-compress uses gzip. My main concern is that spec-helper could
> cause compatibility problems when building non-Mandrake packages on a
> Mandrake system, since spec-helper compresses the man pages
> automatically and non-Mandrake packages may not be expecting this.
makes the links relative, strip files, and zips up the doc files.
this means that you will no longer have to strip and zip the doc iles in the
spec code.
>
> 4. I notice that in Mandrake change log entries, the package version
> number is at the end of the entry's header. Does this cause any
> trouble when building Mandrake source packages on a non-Mandrake
> system, or when installing Mandrake binary packages on a non-Mandrake
> system?
>
shouldn't cause a problem.
> I guess what I don't like about these things is that they're
> deviations from standard package building practices and the standard
> version of RPM. Mandrake and Red Hat can compete in areas like
> installation and the user interface, but I think cooperation is
> important in the area of software packaging.
>
as far as i know, they're compatible. ;)
> --
> Matt Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Web site: http://www.crosswinds.net/~mattcamp/
> ICQ #: 33005941
>
