Re: Package support (RPM, deb, pkg, kits, etc.)

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Rusty" == Rusty Ballinger <address@hidden> writes:

Rusty> - As a developer who builds & distributes packages, I'd love a
Rusty> tool which abstracts platform-specific packaging, the same way
Rusty> autoconf & automake abstract platform-specific building.  I
Rusty> don't want to become a member of every packaging tool's
Rusty> community; I just want it to be easy to build a variety of
Rusty> package formats from a single source tree & package
Rusty> description.

I wasn't fully clear.

I do think it would be useful.  However it seems that most package
maintainers are not also the package developers.  And, most package
maintainers only develop for a single platform.

Rusty> - As an end user who builds & installs software on my own
Rusty> systems, I would rather build & install a package appropriate
Rusty> to my system than "make install".

That's interesting.  I don't hear that much!

>> Introducing another tool would probably just make things harder for
>> Debian/RPM package maintainers.

Rusty> How so?  (If they don't want to use the tool, they don't have
Rusty> to!)

Yeah, you're right.


Anyway I think the big problem is sub-package breakdown.  Maybe this
is solveable.  I'm willing to put patches into automake that help with
`autopackage'.

The automake-related idea I had was that installable objects would be
marked by the sub-package they belong to.  Something like:

    lib_LIBRARIES = libfoo.a
    devel_header_HEADERS = foo/foo.h

Tom