RE: distro name

[Dag Wieers <dag wieers com>]

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, Wichmann, Mats D wrote:

> >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.
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something in the above proposal, but the
> LSB is trying to reduce the need to do distro-specific builds,
> and the suggestion seems to go in the other direction.

I'm sorry, but LSB is never going to tell me whether a distribution has 
alsa-support or whether it is having desktop-file-utils. And even if that 
is the goal, I've got distributions from 3 years ago that I have to 
support.

With all respect, but I don't think LSB is a good option here, there is 
more to an environment than the glibc version and the location of files.

How are you going to build cross-vendor packages when every vendor is 
having their own specific naming convention and libraries ? What 3rd 
parties are doing is removing all the dependencies from thei packages so 
that they will install. Making dependencies completely futile and having 
no guarantee they will work.

What we're doing is probably the only sane and workable solution. Build 
every package for its own distribution and tag it so people understand 
that.

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