[|MiNi0n|]

Ok,

As if I didn't need any confirmation as to why I prefer BSD to Linux... no matter... I'm getting it anyway.

One Word: Ugh!!!

I won't go into detail, I know there are a lot of Linux users here... to each his own. But... to all those Linux guru's... please provide me some input.

I'm trying to wrap my head around building source rpms on Redhat 8. Anyone offer me some definitive tips to do this easily and quickly???

Oh how I wish I could just cd /usr/ports/neat-o-app/; make install clean

[v902]

1.) RPMs SUCK! Can't you just get a .tar.gz or something and just do ./configure;make; make install?

What exactly are you trying to install?


EDIT: to install just do su -c "rpm -i RPMS-SUCK.rpm". But I would go with anything but RPMs. (and of course something like .deb that doesn't work on your distro :D )

[bsdjunkie]

rpm -i whatever.src.rpm will install stuff to /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES
and a spec file in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS

you can go into SPEC dir and build from there.

rpm -bb whatever.spec

or you can install slackware and use tar.gz like the rest of us ;)

[|MiNi0n|]

Thx vlad & junkie.

I fumbled through the first few step you described junkie and then found the /usr/src/ stuff but was at a complete loss as to what to do next.

Cheers! I'll give it a go and let you know.

[schotty]

rpms are fine. I would have to pass the blame to the rpm packager, not the user or the RPM db itself.

[Strog]

In Red Hat you can use rpmbuild --rebuild foo.src.rpm and it will compile it and dump a binary rpm in the /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ directory. You can then cd over there and do a rpm -ivh foo.rpm.

Of course this all assumes that you didn't want to custom build it.

It is real tempting to just tar -xvf package.tar.gz and cd, make, make install and forget the whole rpm thing but don't do it. If you try to install any packages after this, rpm won't know anything about it and will proceed like you never did install. This can cause a lot of headaches if your package is bigger than something like sntop or some other small self contained package. This is what causes a lot of people's rpm headaches.

I've had pretty good success with rpms but when I discovered FreeBSD's ports I knew I was home. Ports beats rpms and apt hands down. I do have to give credit to Debian and Mandrake for making apt and rpms easier to work with.

[schotty]

The only real beef I have with RPMs are the fact that the packager can set the dependencies. So you get people publishing RPMs that have not enough deps or no deps, or in the worst case, deps that ared not needed for the RPM to run if forced. I have seen this time and time again. I am just hoping that RPMbuild can eventually compute the dependencies off the makefile or something soon. Because IMHO, its the best package management tool there, ignoring this snafu.