From: kevq-ml AT banana DOT demon DOT co DOT uk (Kevin F. Quinn) Subject: RE: GNU-Win32 distribution question 14 May 1998 10:49:07 -0700 Message-ID: <199805131744.SAA12171.cygnus.gnu-win32@linux.compd.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com 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. - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".