Installation of Tar and development tree rpm packages

[Craig White]

Top posting moved to bottom for clarity
On Tue, 2005-01-25 at 14:08 -0500, David Curry wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 15:06:30 +0100, Erik P. Olsen <erik at epo.dk> wrote:
> > Excuse me for asking a newbie question, but I am a little uneasy about
> > what to do.
> > 
> > I am running FC3 which comes with GNU tar version 1.14. I plan to
> > upgrade it to version 1.15.1 which comes in tar format only.
> 
> one important question. why do you want to upgrade. if the  newer
> version of tar has an important feature that you want then you might
> want to suggest this as an RFE against tar in bugzilla.redhat.com.
> 
> if you want to upgrade, one way to do it is to check if the
> development tree has a newer version and install that. post the
> results
----
> Thx to Erik Olsen and all respondents to his question about
> installation 
> of updates application packages currently available only in tar format. 
>   Very informative and useful.
> 
> Rahul Sundaram's response (shown below) raised additonal questions I 
> hope some on the list will address.
> 
> As I currently understand fedora processes and structure, development 
> tree are primarily (solely?) oriented toward the latest official core 
> release (FC3) and the forthcoming official core release (FC4).  Are some 
>   development tree packages directly useable on up-to-date FC2 and/or 
> FC1 systems as well?
---
sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes, you only need the source-rpm and
rebuild it on your system.
---
> 
> I am primarily interested in open source desktop/productivity 
> applications such as abiword, OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric, Mysql, firefox, 
> thunderbird, etc. if that is a relevant factor.
----
This clearly should be in bugzilla.fedora.com

Amanda is part of distribution as is 'tar' utility. If amanda doesn't function properly because of tar, the supplied tar, then it clearly is one for bugzilla.

If however, this is a source installation of amanda - then you have to consider an appended install of a source tar version that takes into account the requirements of the newer amanda.

The concept of rpm is that you get the necessary dependencies resolved. When you go to source, you pretty much have to fend for yourself.

Easy way to get updated desktop apps per above is to keep upgrading to latest fedora. The things you list above can sometimes be a struggle to update. If you don't mind the struggle...go for it.

Craig