Re: ... binary RPM question ...

[Michael Jennings <mej kainx org>]

On Friday, 22 June 2007, at 15:10:29 (-0600),
Bob Proulx wrote:

> In this case of people trying to use rpm for closed sourced projects
> then usually the files will be installed by methods outside of rpm.
> So from your perspective, yes, they will appear "out of the blue".
> Of course this is frowned upon by free software advocates because it
> prevents the source from being distributed.  But as far as producing
> a workable rpm file this is okay from a technical perspective.

Only if you consider "seat of the pants" builds technically
acceptable.

> It is against most software rules/guidelines for distributing
> packages with a distribution (e.g. Fedora) but not against rpmbuild
> rules.  The rpmbuild program allows this fine.  The rpm process is
> okay with this.  It is a philosophical issue and not a technical
> one.

Ditto above.

> Of course doing it this way is fine.  But it is not required.

For those who feel reproducable, consistent builds are not desireable
or technically advantageous, I'm sure this is correct.

> Among other things bundling a binary blob in like that allows a
> .src.rpm file to be produced that could rebuild the binary .rpm
> file.  But because the source is not really source the .src.rpm file
> is not really useful.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record here.

> It could not be used to port the code from 32-bit to 64-bit for
> example.  Therefore IMNHO in this type of case it does not really
> add anything over just having the files appear out of the blue.

Couldn't disagree more.

Michael

-- 
Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX)  http://www.kainx.org/  <mej kainx org>
n + 1, Inc., http://www.nplus1.net/       Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org)
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