Re: question re: %configure

[Jeff Johnson <jbj redhat com>]

On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 04:46:18PM +0200, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> 
> Whoah - that's a surprising answer ;) So, basically, it's still in there 
> for an arch that's not supported anyway ? So, for normal packages, it 
> serves no purpose whatsoever ?
> 
> As a side note : why doesn't it check specifically for config.guess then ?

Because. :-)

> 
> > > If it is better, then I'll just change all my specs and add
> > > BuildRequires: libtool
> > 
> > Maybe. There's a certain core set of functionality provided by the
> > build system that Red Hat packages don't bother tracking, e.g.
> > cc/make/as/ls etc.  libtoolize is arguably a member of that set.
> 
> Well, I'm currently working on a system to set up clean build roots for 
> any dist and then build rpms in it, so I'm finding out everything you need 
> for rpm builds the hard way ;) 
> It's starting to work out pretty well and I'll announce it here, since I 
> think it's a useful tool for generating good packages.
> 

If you're a "build master", then you ought to think seriusly about
defining your own %configure, rather than trying to figger whys and
wherefors of the "default" rpm configuration. For example, many linux
vendors have adopted useful build discipline(s) using macros to extend
an rpm build process. The end result is that essential components of the build
process are factored out of packages and into the build system configuration,
all as it should be IMHO, as rpm just isn't very good at building
software. OTOH, rpm is *very* good at handling binary packages.

%configure is just one of maybe 20 or so common operations that are
part of build system configuration. The %configure macro started life as
	echo "%configure ./configure --prefix=/usr" >> /etc/rpm/macros
and I suspect that many, many packages would still build with exactly that
definition.

> I didn't realize libtoolize was considered standard for package building, 
> I always considered libtool to be in the autotools space, used for going 
> from cvs stuff to dist tarballs.

That's a valid POV, but there are other POV's as well. One has to think
through what can be accomplished with dependencies and tools, and what can be
handled just as well by other means. The goal of every build system is to
produce and deliver working bits, reproducibly and reliably.

73 de Jeff

-- 
Jeff Johnson	ARS N3NPQ
jbj@redhat.com (jbj@jbj.org)
Chapel Hill, NC