[lug] building SRPM's

[D. Stimits]

Michael Hirsch wrote:
> Have you considered using some other tool to make your RPM.  When I
> had to make them a lot I used crust which is part of "rust".  Rust is
> a gui tool for RPM building and crust is the backend system.  You
> basically put the files in a directory structure and crust bundles
> them into an RPM.

I was unaware of special tools for this. I have the fedora extras tools 
but not the one you mention. Unfortunately, the one you mention does not 
work on fedora core 4, the srpm build is broken and unable to 
build...which does not leave me with a lot of confidence. I'm guessing 
they use this tool on other rpm distros and not on FC4 so far, e.g., 
SuSE or Mandriva.

> Another system I've used often is check-install (or is it chkinstall? 
> I can't recall and I'm not on my system).  You run it and it runs
> "make install" (or whatever command you tell it to run) and keeps
> track of what happens.  Then it queries whether you want it to be an
> RPM, deb, or tgz file.  After you choose it'll bundle everything up
> into the corresponding package.

I might give this a shot, but it shouldn't be this hard. If I ever 
figure this out maybe I'll have to write a fedora-specific tool that 
works like rust (but builds on fedora).

> I think RPM spec files are awful, and the whole idea of creating a
> build system that outputs rpms is a complete mess, so I've always
> relied on these other tools to make my life easier.

I really cringe every time I have to think of packaging. If you write 
something and put it in tarball, lots of people want the rpm before they 
use it. If you write a fedora rpm, they want a SuSE rpm. If you write 
that, then they want the Mandriva rpm. Then the debian users want 
.deb's. Let's not forget the number of people expecting binary packages 
in 32 bit athlon format, 64 bit athlon format, i386 format, optimized 
i686 format, opteron format...you name it. I'll tell you something very 
very high on my wish list: Something like sourceforge that is a build 
farm with very high cpu power, that lets you submit a valid format like 
tarball or rpm, and creates all of those packages for you, asking 
questions on a web interface as it goes. I can write a lot of nice 
code...but getting it out is nearly impossible, I don't have the 
hardware or packaging knowledge needed (and getting the knowledge is 
painfully hard...learning C and proper memory management is a cake walk 
in comparison, and finding people to help with packaging of something 
they won't personally use is a rarity).
...

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net