simple way to build rpm?

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Thu Sep 17 03:56:24 UTC 2009


On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:40 AM, Mikkel <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com> wrote:
> Fernando Cassia wrote:
>>
>> It is just RIDICULOUS not to have an automated way to create RPMs. If
>> I can download some source file, and then ./configure make and make
>> install, this automated tool is perfectly capable of finding the base
>> system, the files installed during the process, and the requirements.
>>
>> I just don't understand this *nix attitude that "complex is good". End
>> users might want to create their own RPMs, too.
>>
> There is not a *nix attitude that "complex is good". Until the event
> of fancy GUIs, the trend was for simple packages that did one thing
> well, and could be linked to other programs to do complex tasks.
> (There are a couple of exceptions to this.) A lot of GUIs are front
> ends for one or more cli programs, so they are also following the
> building block tradition.

I´m fully aware of the unix philosophy and how it works.
I´m not talking about that. I´m talking about thinking that all users
should have the knowledge of sysadmins.
That is a completely different matter.

The HP inkjet drivers (HPLIP) is one example of a "fire and forget"
installer that just detects "where am I? what platform is this? what
compilers do I have available? is the build environment safe? are the
additional required packages available? (if not it fetches those)",
etc.

But that is NOT the norm on Linux. Somehow people write long 20-step
FAQs and tell the user "here it is, use this FAQ" and the FAQ includes
a lot of statements that should be copied and pasted on a shell prompt
(terminal).

So, why not write a damn shell script instead of pasting 10 separate
lines and subject the user to copy-and-paste hell?.

That´s what I mean by "complex is good attitude".

FC




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