Re: [Fedora-packaging] No pre-built applications rule

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Sun, 2006-09-17 at 07:53 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>  On Sat, 2006-09-16 at 22:08 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>  > Hey guys,
>  > It's come to my attention that we don't have a "Packages must be built
>  > from source, no precompiled binaries" rule in the current guidelines.  I
>  > think this is an oversight as the Binary Firmware section:
>  > http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#BinaryFirmware
>  > 
>  > implies this for the specific case of firmware.
>  > 
>  > How about something like:
>  > 
>  > "Packages must be built from source code.  Including pre-built programs
>  > or libraries is strictly forbidden.  A select few exceptions are made
>  > for binary firmware.  Please see
>  > http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#BinaryFirmware
>  > for details."
>  > 
>  > And on ReviewGuidelines:
>  > "Must: The package must be built from source.  No pre-built programs or
>  > libraries are acceptable."
>  -1
>  
>  > Thoughts, opinions welcome.
>  
>  IMO, both rules above are a mistake.
>   
By both, do you mean the sections for Packaging/Guidelines and for
Packaging/ReviewGuidelines or the new proposal and the pre-existing
BinaryFirmware Guidelines?

>  In my understanding the original intend was to force
> "rebuildability" on
>  LINUX code, i.e. all Linux code to be open-sourced.
>  
>  I.e. you'd first have to define what you understand as "Linux code".
>  
>  A native firmware to be applied by a running Linux kernel would
>  definitely qualify as such. But a firmware (as being applied by
>  emulators) 
I'd place this under the BinaryFirmware Guidelines so it's not covered
in this new guideline.

>   or foreign libraries (as being required by cross compilers)
>  are cornercases.
>   
Meaning the libraries built for the foreign architecture?  So these do
not execute on the host OS?  If that's the case, then it could be
considered data for the cross-toolchain rather than a library or
program.  I haven't thought about that case enough to know if that's a
good idea or not, though.

If it's a special build of a library that the cross toolchain uses to
run on the host OS, then I think it does need to be rebuilt from source.

-Toshio