Why are RPM's distro specific?

[Deron Meranda]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:00:47 -0500, Marc M <linuxr at gmail.com> wrote:
> RPMs are for Redhat-based distributions only,

Red Hat sponsored the development of the RPM format and software,
but it is no longer just for Red Hat distributions.  In fact, some people
use RPM on commercial Unixes (non-Linux).

But as said, the main reasons RPMs tend to be specific to a
particular distro are,

1. Assumptions made about system configuration, such as
pathnames to config file locations, boot script setups, existing
users and groups, and so on.

2. Dependencies on other packages, including how those
packages are named, compiled, or even in some cases
where they are installed or what patches have been made
to the virgin source.

And of course the usually unstated: testing.  Making sure
that all the different packages do in fact work well together
and don't cause conflicts.

Thus, the "portability" of an RPM is mostly a factor of
how self-contained the software is, versus how much
it has to depend on or integrate into the rest of the
system.  For instance RPMs for man pages tend to
be very portable, while an RPM for something complex
like X is not too portable.
-- 
Deron Meranda