Re: [boost] Boost RPM spec file: Take 2

From: Pedro Lamarão (pedro.lamarao_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-21 17:01:44

Patrick Hartling escreveu:

> What could get complicated is dealing with optional libraries and the like.
> In my experience, it can get tricky to put conditional stuff into a spec
> file, mainly because rpmbuild needs to know which sub-packages to handle
> after the build completes and which ones to skip. If that can't be
> determined statically when rpmbuild gets started (before any source
> extraction or build takes place), then I don't know how to handle that case.
> That doesn't mean that it's impossible, and I am quite new to writing RPM
> spec files. Others may have insight into this sort of situation.

The point of a non-monolithic set of RPM files is not to conditionally 
build packages, but to conditionally install them.

This enables other packages to describe their dependencies in a more 
granular way. Suppose someone wants to install a new cron substitute 
based on DateTime. This person doesn't care about Boost. It's ideal for 
her to install only DateTime, and keep things to a minimum.

Typically, pre-built packages will live in a repository somewhere, 
available to interested people that should be installing them through 
some package dependency resolver like yum or apt.

The particular complication in this case is determining the 
inter-dependencies in the Boost collection. It may be that the goodness 
of the non-monolithic design will be made nil by the extreme 
interconnection of all the libraries. I can't tell.

--
  Pedro Lamarão