Re: canonical way to detect platform/distribution

[Michael Jennings <mej kainx org>]

On Saturday, 19 April 2008, at 22:17:53 (+0200),
devzero2000 wrote:

> IMHO, the general problem of vendor rpm fragmentation isn't likely
> to be resolved with rpm macros. But for a single distro (rhel vs
> suse vs mandriva vs ...)  and different release of this, it is a
> possibility: not good in general but it's life...............

Using standard macros is a great way to improve portability.  For
example, using "%{__mkdir_p}" instead of "mkdir -p" helps packages
port to platforms that do not have GNU mkdir (since %{__mkdir_p} could
easily be defined to "mkdirhier" or some flavor of "mkinstalldirs"
instead of the GNU-specific "mkdir -p") and allows vendors like IBM or
Sun to repoint various commands independent of the value of $PATH
(e.g., %{__install} could use /usr/ucb/install instead of
/usr/bin/install).

The problems arise when packagers use non-portable macros that are
specific to their proprietary little sandboxes (e.g., %{make} on
Mandr[ai][kv][ea], %{__id_u} on Fedora, etc.).  Too many vendors
couldn't care less about whether or not their packages build on other
distros, completely ignoring the plight of independent packagers and
ISVs.

Michael

-- 
Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX)  http://www.kainx.org/  <mej kainx org>
Linux Server/Cluster Admin, LBL.gov       Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org)
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 "I don't care if you win or lose, just as long as you win."
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