WBEL Repository like Freshrpms -- was Re: [WBEL-users] nvidia nforce boards and integrated NIC

[bishop]

Hi Johnny,

As you may have read in the message immediately preceding this one, 
unfortunately some packagers' RPMs cannot be rebuilt without the help of 
unspecified magic macros that usually do not appear in the SPEC file but 
are assumed to be in the development environment.

In other words, the SRPM is incomplete and cannot be used to reliably 
build the binary packages -- even though such is the goal of the design 
of RPM:

> RPM was designed to build software packages reliably and reproducibly. Software development using RPM proceeds in strict stages from virgin sources...
> -- Jeff Johnson,
> RPM Maintainer
> http://www.redhat.com/knowledgebase/rpm3.0/building.html

While I largely enjoy the benefit of Mr Wieers' packages, it must be 
understood that some porting to a Linux standard build must be done, 
usually just in the area of completing the definition of the macro kit 
is currently delivered with the RPM.  His packages are usually very 
sound, but always ship without the crutch of a very rich set of macros.

It's unfortunate, but it's a direction that both Mr Wieers and Mr Thimm 
have logically chosen, and it does put more work on us if we choose to 
port to another distro not already shipping from their build network. 
Unfortunately WBEL is not exactly like RHEL, as evidenced by Mr Morris' 
work to 'buy' RHEL updates into WBEL and the labour involved.  We can't 
just grab RHEL packages and expect them to work *all* the time, no more 
than we can grab EH9 packages and expect them to work.  The risk is 
always there, and I'm in the small crowd that prefers reliability over 
this-week's-code.  It's why I'm not running FC2 during its remarkably 
short lifetime.

While I'm here, though, I do want to say that I really do enjoy Mr 
Saou's packages.  His FreshRPMs site is consistently a source of 
well-built RPMs of quality greater than some distros currently being 
sold to unwitting retail customers today.  FreshRPMs and the Falsehope 
site are outstanding in the field, in my professional opinion.

  - bish

Johnny Hughes wrote:

> On Sun, 2004-10-03 at 09:06 -0500, iron monkey wrote:
> 
>>This type of thing made me think about the idea of creating a
>>respository of WBEL rpms/srpms that would be outside the main
>>distribution just like freshrpms...  Or, maybe consider working with
>>the freshrpm people to see if they'd add WBEL to the list of rpms that
>>they track...
>>
>>I understand the purpose of maintaining the core of WBEL to be direct
>>builds off of RHEL SRPMs, but would it be worth while to have
>>something like freshrpms for WBEL?
>>
>>Maybe it's not really required because the RPMs from freshrpms would
>>probably work so there may not be any issues.
>>
>>It's just a thought, would it even be worth it? 
>>
>>Probably posting to the wrong list?
>>
>>Mark
>>
> 
> 
> Dag Wieers ( http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php ) has a yum
> repository with many programs for RHEL/WBEL/CentOS/TaoLinux/Lineox.
> 
> 
>>
>>
>>On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 10:57:14 +0200, Alexandre Aufrere
>><loopkin@nikosoft.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I fixed and customized 274 drivers from NVIDIA for both NIC and audio. I
>>>also wrote a new specfile, so that the version number depends on the
>>>kernel version number: this allows to install and maintain easily one
>>>version for each kernel.
>>>
>>>If someone is interested i can post the SRPM here (well, i hope it is
>>>legal: i didn't read the NVIDIA license very carefully).
>>>Actually, what would be even better for me is that these drivers are
>>>integrated by someone in a repository and kept in sync with WB3...
>>>
>>>Lastly, the forcedeth OSS driver for the NIC has been backported to 2.4,
>>>so there is still hope that in a future update it is put directly into
>>>the RHEL/WB 3 kernel.
>>>
>>>c u
>>>
>>>Alex
> 
> -----------------------
> Johnny Hughes
> <http://www.HughesJR.com/>
> 
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