Re: [gentoo-dev] Linux Standard Base

[Terje Kvernes]

Dan Armak <ermak@×××××××××××××.il> writes:

> But there's already one such method that always works - configure;
> make; make install. If LSB says RPMs are better than that, it
> discourages practicing what is the heart of Portage - automatized
> downloading, compiling & installing. The LSB should push for
> standardized results, not for a standard way of achieving them.

  extremely well put. 
 
> Whoever wants a pre-compiled package will eventually be able to get
> it via Portage which already supports binary packages. Whoever gets
> a package from its home site as source is thus encouraged to write
> an ebuild for it and give back to the community. RPM availability
> would desatroy that - Portage and emerge would simply become much
> less important.

  well, and there is more icky stuff:

,----[ <url: http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/gLSB/gLSB/x12251.html > ]
| Package Dependencies
|
| Packages must depend on a dependency "lsb". They may not depend on
| other system-provided dependencies. If a package includes "Provides"
| it must only provide a virtual package name which is registered to
| that application.
`----

  at first, one might think, "great, no more looking for the oddball
  package that contains <foo>"... but in reality, you're saying.
  "bundle everything inside lsb and everything outside as well". since
  there isn't a _real_ frontend like portage or apt for standard rpm
  usage these days, every distro will need to make all their base
  packages lsb-noted, but who'll _do_ that? and what will lsb do when
  debian, slackware and Suse come along saying "hey, we want _this_ to
  be the glibc-package", but RedHat already has a "lsb-glibc"-package?

  you don't want _your_ lsb-packages to depend on other distros
  lsb-packages do you?
 
> Of course, choice is important. So whoever thinks RPMs are good for
> Gentoo can go ahead and modify Portage/emerge to support them.

  agreed. being able to say "emerge -rpm <package>" might not be a bad
  thing, but it's still not as nice. the only _real_ reason for a
  common binary format is for the business world who want to be able
  to brand their binary package as "lsb-approved". of course, the way
  they'll do this is called "static linking", just to be on the safe
  side. I doubt we'll see this change.

> But people who still think actually compiling a package with the
> correct optimizations for you CPU is best <gasp> shouldn't be
> branded non-standard. (Or non-mainstream <gasp>).

  it's been that way for a while. personally I've used redhat, some
  debian, some suse and some slackware for some time. I like different
  things from different places, and I to love the _idea_ behind
  Gentoo, because it addresses everything I've missed. easy to
  customize, easy to upgrade, easy to admin and still state of the art
  where you want it to be so (sadly, debian doesn't make the last
  point at all).
 
> Well, that's my opinion, for what it's worth. (phew!)

  right, that means we're up to what? 0.04$? :)

-- 
Terje - adding his two cents.