Re: distro name

[Dag Wieers <dag wieers com>]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Jim C. wrote:

> > You mean, like /etc/lsb-release ?
> 
> Ah, so there is such a critter.  Glad to hear it.
> 
> For purposes of solving the issue at hand though, it would need to be
> mandatory for each distro and *THAT'S* sure not going to happen any time soon.
> ;-)

What we are doing to get the same result is what Axel suggested. When 
building packages we supply the distribution by doing:

	--define dist fc2

This gets automatically expanded into:

	%{?dist: %{expand: %%define %dist 1}}

Which would be similar as:

	--define fc2 1

Because of this, we can do things like this:

	%{?rh7:%define _without_freedesktop 1}
	%{?rh7:%define _without_gtk2 1}
	%{?el2:%define _without_freedesktop 1}
	%{?el2:%define _without_gtk2 1}

	...

	%{!?_without_freedesktop:BuildRequires: desktop-file-utils}
	%{!?_without_gtk2:BuildRequires: gtk2-devel, libIDL-devel, gnome-vfs2-devel}
	%{?_without_gtk2:BuildRequires: gtk+-devel}

in our SPEC files and build packages for different distributions. The 
definitions of what each distribution supplies and what not can be defined 
in your macros, but we currently are not doing this. An implementation can 
be found here:

	http://dag.wieers.com/packages/rpm-macros-rpmforge/rpm-macros-rpmforge.spec

Here are some examples that make use of it:

	http://dag.wieers.com/packages/firefox/firefox.spec
	http://dag.wieers.com/packages/xine-lib/xine-lib.spec

Using this scheme, we are packaging for:

	Aurora Linux 1.91
	Fedora Core 1 and 2
	Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.3, 8.0 and 9
	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3 (TaoLinux, CentOS, WhiteBox, ...)
	Yellow Dog Linux 3

It would have been better if RPM has a standardized way to supply a 
package with its distribution information (from its own SPEC files).
So that the dist definition is implied based on your distribution.

JBJ wants to have consensus before implementing a scheme like that, but I 
cannot give him consensus and I wonder who could and what is needed for 
that. I think LSB should make something like this mandatory.

--   dag wieers,  dag@wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]