[lug] building SRPM's

[D. Stimits]

...
> Most of the other architectures besides x86 usually do get built by the 
> buildd systems if the package maintainer doesn't upload binaries (or 
> can't).
> 
> I guess what I'm saying is... your dream is possible, if Debian can do 
> it interally -- but it'd require a LOT of heavy iron, and the real 
> problems would be building for different versions of different distros 
> all on different gcc, glibc, yadda yadda yadda.  It'd have to be a 
> pretty "smart" system.

Now here is an idea that is the poor man's version of this. People will 
say if you want it then build it...but I don't have the knowledge (or 
patience) to do so. Maybe someone googling though will see it and say 
they want to do it. The idea is a new distribution (hehe, I can hear the 
cackling now), that has no other purpose than to cross-compile and 
package. It would come set up to build various architecture binaries 
from sources, and to package for multiple distributions. E.G., it would 
take a tarball and whatever specification you can get it (such as a spec 
file or whatever debians use), ask what it needs to fill in missing 
gaps, and then build and package the various architectures on multiple 
distros. It could for example output rpm's for multiple versions of 
Mandrake/Mandriva, SuSE, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, in i386, i686, athlon 
architecture, so on.

Yes, it would be painfully difficult to create such a distro. But 
imagine how useful such a distro would be if you could do all that with 
1 spare machine.

...
> Buildforge - anyone?  ;-)

A cross-compiling/packaging distro could use a name like that :)

D. Stimits, stimits AT comcast DOT net