Re: RPM for gnome-libs 1.0.54?

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Raul Acevedo wrote:

> Keith Wright wrote:
> 
>  > If you want real simple, what's wrong with (./configure; make)?
> 
> If you are installing from tarballs exclusively, nothing.
> 
> If you are installing even partially from RPMs, that doesn't work.
> 
> Unfortunately, RedHat decided long ago that RPMs would put things in places
> different than a standard tarball install would.  So, doing the above
> simply does not work if you have installed things from RPM.  It is a royal
> pain, a very bad decision, and one of the main problems with RPM.  But
> that's the way it is.

That has nothing to do with RPM, it's just a decision of the packager, and
the locations are perfectly normal and FSSTD compliant. If I didn't want
to be able to install as a normal user and thus be using --prefix=/gnome,
I would use the locations that the rpm packages used.

> The beauty of rpm is its simplicity, which means I haven't had to read all
> 13+ pages of its man page, or a whole book, to know how to use it.  THIS IS
> HOW IT SHOULD BE.  Again, if tarballs->RPMs were a semi-obvious thing, then
> maybe I should have looked into it.  But it never even remotely occurred to
> me because that seems impossible.  The magic about spec files and
> programmers putting them in there is just that, magic, unless it is made
> public.

rpm -ta foo.tar.gz

No it's not going to be semi-obvious, but neither is 'tar -xzf foo.tar.gz'
obvious from a once-over of the tar man page. You know how to do it
because of experience. That's why things like info pages and extended
documentation (ala www.rpm.org) are important.

> I can understand that programmers don't want to spend much time on
> stuff like this.  They don't necessarily have to.  I don't care who
> does it.  The GNOME project, as an entity, has to find people to do
> these things. It has organizers whose job is to oversee these details.  
> To simply say "well the programmers don't want to do it, so some
> random volunteer just has to", is wrong.

On the contrary - people concentrate on what they see as important. If
you're willing to volunteer your time to help out on this issue, which
does indeed affect a lot of GNOME users, then speak up and we'll put you
to work. :)

-- Elliot
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.