Multilib Middle-Ground

[Les Mikesell]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 8:04 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
>>  Unlike on Gentoo, the user doesn't have to rebuild the packages, only one
>>  packager has to do it and all the users just get the packages from the
>>  packager, be it from the Fedora repository or a third-party repository. The 'p'
>>  word comes into play because proprietary licenses tend to disallow or at least
>>  limit (e.g. no way to rebuild from source because you don't have it)
>>  repackaging, which is the real cause of your problem.
> 
> 
> And there's always the nosrc games you can play like jpackage does/did
> to work around the distribution legalities for proprietary junk.

I'd say a more accurate description is that jpackage nosrc packages work 
around the peculiar packaging and PATH requirements of distributions 
that stubbornly refuse to standardize that crap and make it difficult 
for their users to install programs of their choice.

> Even in a perfect world where all the rpm based distributions came to
> an agreement on how to package everything self-consistently,

Why just RPM based?  And why hasn't even that happened in the decade+ 
when it has been around?

> we still
> wouldn't have a mechanism to force proprietary vendors to use best
> practices... not when there are tools like checkinstall out and about
> to short-circuit the standard rpm packaging process for proprietary
> distributors to abuse.

Why is there still the need to work around peculiar distribution practices?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com