Subject: RE: GNU-Win32 distribution question
From: [email-masked] (Kevin F. Quinn)

14 May 1998 10:49:07 -0700
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To: [email-masked]

A subscriber asked me privately to justify why I suggested .tar.gz 
for source distributions instead of using RPM for both binary and 
source distributions.  I decided to share my thoughts with the 
list again :-)

There's a few things about source distrubutions that for me, makes
..tar.gz preferable to RPM (or any other package manager):

1: Unpacking locations

Source distributions are typically single trees installed in
non-standard places exclusively (i.e. without anything else
cluttering up the tree), for example
/users/fred/porting/less_1.2.3

On the other hand, binary distributions are typically a
collection of files installed in several standard places,
alongside installations of other distributions, for example
/usr/local/bin, /usr/local/man etc.  RPM is just the job for
managing the latter, but seems to me to be pointless for the
former.

2: Exclusive/Inclusive destinations

Source distributions typically create a single directory tree,
with the top level directory having the version number appended
to the name, for example less_1.2.3.  Installing a new
distribution version of source typically means creating a new
source tree.

However for binary distributions, the installation typically
replaces previous versions.  Again, I can see that RPM is useful 
for the latter but not for the former.

Summary

Both of these show how the way RPM (and presumeably other package 
managers) add value to binary distributions.  These same 
facilities, which are value-added for binary distributions are 
actually (in my opinion) of no use, indeed are unwanted for source 
distributions.  As a result, I don't see that RPM adds value to 
source distributions over tar/gzip archives - and if it doesn't 
add value then it's unnecessary baggage.  The things I (and 
presumeably most developers) do with source distributions is 
"make" et. al., modify files, re-make and "make install" - or 
perhaps even "make rpm" (to make a binary RPM distribution 8-) ).  
The things I (and presumeably most people) do with binary 
distributions are quite different - install/upgrade and run.

I guess what I'm saying, is that I don't see what advantages there 
are in going to the trouble of building RPMs for source 
distributions, and I can see several disadvantages.

Kev.
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