simple way to build rpm?

[Todd Zullinger]

Fernando Cassia wrote:
> Could you please tell what is wrong with checkinstall other than "it
> sucks" ??

The biggest problem with checkinstall is that it requires you to run
it as root.  If you've taken a look at many of the Makefiles shipped
with a lot of software, you'd be very cautious about running 'make
install' as root, which is what checkinstall proceeds to do.

This opens you up to any mistakes or malicious code in the software's
Makefiles.  Say the Makefile tries to run rm -rf /$DESTDIR as it
starts.  And oops, it manages to not set $DESTDIR.  That's fun.

(It doesn't help that checkinstall itself is a 3000 line shell script.
That has a lot of potential for adding bugs.)

The last time I looked closely at the packages it produced (which has
been a while now), they weren't at all close to something that would
meet the standards that Fedora sets for its packages.

> I'm sure the author of checkinstall would be more than happy to
> receive bug reports.

I am not a user of checkinstall and have no intention to be one.  So
I've got no reason to submit bug reports there.  I submit my fair
share, so I don't feel guilty in the slightest here. :)

I don't mean to disparage the checkinstall author(s).  I just don't
find it to be useful or a good thing to suggest others use.

> Instead, the attitude I saw here was that checkinstall sucks, and
> that everybody should build RPMs the traditional (complex) way.

I'm sorry if that's the impression you got.  I thought that I'd
provided a useful link to introductory documentation on creating clean
packages for Fedora.  If that's not helpful, I'm sorry.

BTW, have you checked out the checkinstall README¹ file?  It's not
like it's a 10 line document.  I could make a handful of packages in
the time it would take me to read that.  Or I could read the wiki page
on creating rpm packages. :)

¹ http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/docs/README

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 542 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20090916/4d67d20c/attachment-0001.bin