Re: [boost] Re: boost RPM

From: Dan Nuffer (dnuffer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-02-18 22:03:50

Beman Dawes wrote:
> At 04:07 PM 2/16/2001 -0700, Dan Nuffer wrote:
>
>  >Of course.  RPM is not a build system.  It's a packaging/installation
>  >system.
>
> Hum... The "Maximum RPM" books goes into builds in some detail.  Do you
> mean that people don't actually use RPM that way, or just that it is too
> restrictive to view RPM as only a build system?
>

Usually, for projects that use autoconf/automake, only two commands are
needed to build the software:
./configure
make

Then to install it:
make install DESTDIR=$DESTDIR

So, it's usually make that does the building and installing.  But, since you
can put whatever commands you want into a .spec file, you can use it to
build things, but it would be a lot more work than using make.

>  >  Similar to Microsoft's MSI technology.  I think it would be
>  >pretty cool if boost had an MSI package for Windows users.
>
> It is just too hard for Boost developers to maintain separate packages for
> every OS family.  We have to keep moving toward cross platform tools, IMO.
>
I agree that would be ideal, but realistically I don't see any hope at all
for a cross platform installation system that would work well with most
OSes.  It seems everyone invents their own.  Who knows how many their are
for Windows (MSI, InstallShield, Wise, etc.)  I think Solaris, SCO Unixware,
Debian Linux, RedHat Linux, HP-UX, etc. all have different systems.
As it currently stands, a .zip file is probably the most cross-platform way
of doing things, but even then people still run into the problem of
line-feed/carriage-returns...
IMHO, it's nice for the end-user to have some sort of installation system be
it RPM,MSI, or whatever else.  It saves people the trouble of having to
worry about how to build the libraries, where to put the files and how to
uninstall it if they decide to (heaven forbid anyone would uninstall boost!
:-)
I think we would have the majority of users covered by having an
InstallShield or MSI package for Windows and a source RPM for Linux.

--Dan Nuffer