Encouraging the use of multiple packaging systems on one systems, and the resulting problems (was: re: /usr/local)

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Friday, October 21, 2005 3:31 PM -0700 "Michael A. Peters" 
<mpeters at mac.com> wrote:

> However, some software is not available as rpm - and I don't believe
> that the end user should be responsible for creating an rpm themselves.

It's relatively straightforward to create a spec file for simple 
applications that packages a source tarball. A simple spec file is little 
more than a meta-script that does the configure/make/makeinstall, and has 
some header info for the RPM DB that any app should have anyway (like name, 
summary, description, URL). Look at how easy it is to make an RPM from the 
SpamAssassin tarball. (Instructions are on the SA download page. It's a 
one-liner.)