RPM and tarballs

[Tony Nelson]

At 1:47 PM -0500 5/8/07, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

>The thread started with building/installing from a source tarball. I
>guess I missed where we shifted to talking about binary tarballs.
>They are not used too often, so you should specify that you are
>talking about binary tarballs.

You are right that I should have specified.  I don't see that the thread
started with any specification of source or binary, now that I look again.


>I fail to see any advantage of binary tarballs. You lose the
>security of the RPM format. You would have to add a signature of
>some type to be sure that the file isn't a fake. If you need any
>scripts to go with the install, that is something else to add. I
>guess I don't see the point of having rpm handle them, instead of
>building a proper RPM if you want rpm to keep track of the files.

Binary tarballs are common, and very often there is no alternate package or
it is done so poorly that it should not be used (cf. JPackage).  The
advantage is saving the few dozen hours needed to learn enough to make spec
files, plus the effort of writing and debugging a proper spec, and then
maintaining it as the package evolves.  See fedora-devel-list for endless
discussions about the difficulty of getting RPMs packaged.  For most of the
rest of us, just untar'ing in a few seconds beats doing many hours of work.
Of course, if someone capable volunteers to package any tarball they're
given, then that problem is mostly solved, as long as that someone works
fast.
-- 
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