On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Jeremy Enos wrote:
> So it's even worse than I thought. Here is the problem I pointed out
> originally:
>
> If foo.rpm depends on rpms which don't exist in that distro, we're
> hosed. I don't think this is a problem for ODA, because we control the
> Requires for it and and can require specific files. However, I don't
> think we can realistically put such a requirement on arbitrarily
> contributed packages.
Yes, we can!
This is the nature of RPM -- and there's nothing we can do about it.
I can certainly require that package authors don't make crappy RPMs. Or,
if you want to make a crappy RPM, then fine, it will work on RH (or
whatever distro you made it on). But not necessarily anywhere else.
I agree that we should make this as easy as possible for package authors,
but we can't just expect any old crapware to work in a well-defined
system.
> Now the next problem that Jason's text reminded me of:
>
> Even if all rpms did the "Right Thing" and depended on files rather than
> rpms, we're still left very vulnerable to getting hosed. Even w/ ODA
> for example. If ODA depends on /usr/sbin/mysqld, but MDK only has an
> rpm which holds /usr/local/sbin/mysqld, then the auto-dependency check
> would fail, no? And heck, even if it worked in that case, I guess we'd
> have problems anyway. I don't know... I guess I'm just negative. ;-)
No, you're absolutely right. This is [part of] what I was trying to say
at the IU meeting. In some cases, you just *need* to have different RPMs
for different distros -- if you want to do dependencies properly, then you
can't avoid this. If you ignore dependencies altogether, the problem goes
away, but then your RPM may or may not work, even if it installs
successfully.
The bottom line: making portable software is hard. Trust me. There are
some limitations that just can't be avoided. If you make an RPM that has
dependencies, then you have to abide by the rules of those dependencies
for every environment that you want to install on (and in this case,
"environment" = "distro").
This is not a limitation of RPM -- it's inherent to RPM's design. It's a
feature (no, really!). :-)
--
{+} Jeff Squyres
{+} [EMAIL PROTECTED]
{+} http://www.lam-mpi.org/
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