Why are RPM's distro specific?

[Marc M]

I agree.  I am never bothered if someone (nicely) sets me straight on
something, and I am always amazed at the knowledge level on these
lists.  THanks guys...

Cheers
Marc


On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:36:46 -0500 (EST), Elliot Lee <sopwith at redhat.com> wrote:
> It's great to see well-informed answers to fedora-list questions. We need
> more people like Deron :-)

> Kudos,
> -- Elliot
 
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Deron Meranda wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:00:47 -0500, Marc M <linuxr at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > RPMs are for Redhat-based distributions only,
> >
> > Red Hat sponsored the development of the RPM format and software,
> > but it is no longer just for Red Hat distributions.  In fact, some people
> > use RPM on commercial Unixes (non-Linux).
> >
> > But as said, the main reasons RPMs tend to be specific to a
> > particular distro are,
> >
> > 1. Assumptions made about system configuration, such as
> > pathnames to config file locations, boot script setups, existing
> > users and groups, and so on.
> >
> > 2. Dependencies on other packages, including how those
> > packages are named, compiled, or even in some cases
> > where they are installed or what patches have been made
> > to the virgin source.
> >
> > And of course the usually unstated: testing.  Making sure
> > that all the different packages do in fact work well together
> > and don't cause conflicts.
> >
> > Thus, the "portability" of an RPM is mostly a factor of
> > how self-contained the software is, versus how much
> > it has to depend on or integrate into the rest of the
> > system.  For instance RPMs for man pages tend to
> > be very portable, while an RPM for something complex
> > like X is not too portable.
> >
> 
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