LSB compatible Samba ?

Steve Langasek vorlon at netexpress.net
Tue Jul 3 21:41:40 GMT 2001


On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Michael Sweet wrote:

> Gerald Carter wrote:
> > ...
> > So I know I'm going to regret this, but no one has made any technical
> > points about RPM vs. dpkg.  It's all "XXXX is superior IMO because
> > it handles XXXXX better".  But no one has offered anything but
> > opinions about these statements.

> OK, here's one opinion - both RPM and dpkg are flawed because they don't
> easily allow a non-source build of the package (e.g. here are the files,
> package them),

Dpkg, at least, uses standard makefile rules for 'build', 'install', and
'binary' when creating packages.  If nothing needs to be done to 'build' the
software, leave that rule blank -- and set the 'install' rule to copy files
from the current directory into Debian's temp install directory.

This is as easy as it's reasonable to make it.  The packager still has the
responsibility to make sure the files end up in the right places on the
filesystem, conformant to the FHS; so a tool that lets a packager say "here
are the files -- package them" without requiring the packager to actively
examine the placement of files is a disservice to all involved, IMHO.  If you
make it too easy for people to make packages, you're just going to end up with
a lot of badly-done packages.

So this is also an opinion, I suppose, since it's based on the sociological
merits of dpkg rather than on the purely technological merits. :)

> and neither allow you to map files in a build directory to the installation
> directories - you have to do it all in makefiles which can be difficult if
> you want portability.

I'm not sure I understand.  What sort of mapping are you trying to do that
you're unable to do?

> In addition, dpkg required root permissions to build a package at all
> because you can't specify the file permissions in the package support
> files.  RPM, at least, can do this as long as you make the RPM build
> directories writable for your developers.

Debian has had this problem solved for some time: there's a wrapper program
called 'fakeroot' that wraps various system calls requiring root permission,
keeping track of what the resulting file permissions, etc. would be.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer





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