[Numpy-discussion] RPMs out of date, have problems

[Konrad Hinsen]

> Disadvantage: by default, the package will go into a distro dependent place
> (Mandrake, Red Hat and Suse are all different) and the package builder
> has to have write access to that place (Suse-7.3 grants it, Mandrake not,
> Red Hat don't know). This invites to building packages as root (DON'T).

RedHat doesn't by default (I changed that on my system).

> python setup.py bdist_rpm needs only write access to the user's home
> directory.

Everywhere? It didn't when I first tried (that was an early distutils
release under RedHat 6.2).

> Of course, adding a generic spec file is the easy 2 minutes solution,
> but I have choosen not to do that because it will invite bad policy
> (providing binary RPMs is asking for trouble).

And yet many people will not accept anything but binary RPMs, out of
ignorance or fear. We won't make everyone happy...

I admit that I never looked into fully automatic RPM generation by
distutils as I usually need to add some manual steps to the
build/install process. For example, distutils doesn't let me specify
compiler options, but I want time-critical code to be compiled with
the highest optimization level. Hopefully this will be addressed in
distutils one day.

Konrad.
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Konrad Hinsen                            | E-Mail: hinsen at cnrs-orleans.fr
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