Re: 8.0 packages to QA

[Kelson Vibber <kelson speed net>]

At 12:20 PM 6/6/2004, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> Where to "Find" the patch would be the question. Someone on this list
> actually pointed a few URLs. however, I would like to get some sort of
> consensus here, Is BugZilla "the" way to go to look for patches? Eg: If
> I see something on Bugtraq which affects one of my RH8.0 packages, Can I
> just look into bugzilla and "try" to locate the patch for it?? If it's
> not available there, are there any other locations whereby it can be
> found?

Well, if no one's posted a patch to bugzilla yet, there's always the 
program's home page.  Some projects (sendmail, for instance) will post 
patches in addition to releasing updated versions of the program.

I think Jon was suggesting that if another vendor issues a patched package, 
if you can get the sources - say from an RHEL-provided SRPM - you should be 
able to extract the patch from that package.

In the case of using someone else's SRPM, the easiest way to deal with it is:

rpm -ivh patched-for-other-distro.src.rpm
(rename the spec file so it won't get overwritten)
rpm -ivh latest-for-your-distro.src.rpm

At this point you'll have all the appropriate sources for the package on 
RH8, plus the patch that was provided by the other vendor (say RHEL).  You 
can then copy the appropriate lines from the other spec file and build an 
RPM incorporating the patch.

P.S. *Please* don't use quotation marks for emphasis. Those of us who went 
through writing programs in college cringe every time we see them misused 
that way. Quotation marks indicate precision (as in an exact quotation), 
titles, or, in informal writing, doubt or irony (as in so-called "scare 
quotes") - never emphasis.


Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>