Re: KDE Package Policy Explained

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Re: KDE Package Policy Explained
by Bruce Jensen on Wednesday 11/Apr/2001, @14:25

This whole topic is rather moot... meaning that the folks at kde.org don't really need to explain or justify why they do things the way they do.

Given the fact that a few here are fairly concerned about not having a package available for their particular distribution, I would suggest to them to learn a bit more about linux... especially when it comes to building software from source. It is not difficult and you will benefit wholly in the long run.

RPM's are something of a misnomer. On the surface they appear to be the 'saving grace' when it comes to software management. I, however, avoid them like the plague. Why? Because RPM only lives up to it's *full* promise by meeting all of the conditions below:

1. Anything and everything you have installed was delivered via RPM.

2. Anything and everything you want to have has an RPM available for your specific linux distro... even rpm's that account for changes in core libraries that the given package may require, i.e., glibc, blah, blah, blah...

3. The rpm's for your distro, assuming they exist, have been *tested* and are *supported* by your distro vendor. Good luck.

4. The rpm's were build with the options that you specifically need/want.

By default, Linux Mandrake 7.2 ships with KDE 2.0, broken kde1 libs, and a fragmented QT 1.44/QT 2.2.1.

On my Linux Mandrake 7.2 box, I have both KDE 2.1.1 and KDE 1.1.2 installed (from source) with a clean Qt 1.45/QT 2.3.0 configured to my specs.

Anyways, I'm getting a bit off topic. Learn how to configure, make, and install from source... not only is it the overwhemingly most common distribution method (DUH!!!)... you shall be rewarded in the long run.

Cheers,

-Bruce

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Official News
·   Also by Bruce Jensen
·   Contact author

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Re: KDE Package Policy Explained
by APW on Wednesday 11/Apr/2001, @20:02

Bruce,

You raise some good points, but I must admit that I max out at building either KDE or the incomprehensible GNOME because of the multitude of packages. It's just a big pain in the ass to compile because of the handholding that you have to do to compile and install.

But, OTOH, I've downloaded and compiled XFree86 (comparable in source size) because it contains one configure and one make file. It takes time, but it's a straightforward compile and install -- just like every other compile that I bother to do.

I've seen recently that a global make script is in the works. After that's reasonably stable, you're absolutely right -- RPMs won't matter. Today for me personally, they do matter.

Cheers,

APW

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Re: KDE Package Policy Explained
by Thorsten Schnebeck on Thursday 12/Apr/2001, @01:49

Ok, lets start a new "culture" of self-compiling ;-)

Here is my compile-from-cvs-script: I call it "makelib". You can easily change it to a "makebase", "makegraphics" ...
I am far away form being a script-god. If you want to use this script, you have to change it according to your own system settings. <WARNING: This can trash your current KDE installation. "make install" happens as user "root" (asked for password)>
(There are maybe some unmotivated line breaks caused by the HTML-formating)

USE IT AT OWN RISK! ;-)

#!/bin/bash
########### User Options ################
PACKAGE=kdelibs
DOWNLOAD_DIR=/opt/kde2/progs
CONFIGURE_OPTS="--host=i586-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/opt/kde2 --disable-debug --with-ssl-dir=/usr/local/ssl"
MAKE_OPTS=""
CVSROOT=":pserver:anonymous@finwal03.tu-graz.ac.at:/cvs"
CVS_OPTS="-r KDE_2_1_1_RELEASE"
#########################################
export CVSROOT
if !(test -e ~/.cvsrc); then
echo -e "cvs -z4 -q\ndiff -u3 -p\nupdate -dP\ncheckout -P" > ~/.cvsrc
echo "Found no ~/.cvsrc... fixed!"
fi
cd $DOWNLOAD_DIR
if test -e $DOWNLOAD_DIR/$PACKAGE; then
MODE=up
cd $PACKAGE
echo "cleaning old build before update..."
make cvs-clean
echo "updating $PACKAGE ..."
cd ..
else
MODE=co
echo "first check-out of $PACKAGE ..."
fi
echo -e "\r" > cvs login
cvs $MODE $CVS_OPTS $PACKAGE
echo "*** ready! ***"
cd $PACKAGE
make -f Makefile.cvs
test -w config.cache && rm config.cache
if test $MODE = "co"; then
./configure --help
echo
echo "**************************************"
echo "all configure options are shown above."
echo "$PACKAGE will be configured by:"
echo "./configure $CONFIGURE_OPTS"
echo "** CHECK YOUR OPTS **"
echo
fi
./configure $CONFIGURE_OPTS
make $MAKE_OPTS
echo "$PACKAGE compiled!"

echo -e "#!/bin/bash\ncd $DOWNLOAD_DIR/$PACKAGE\nmake install && ldconfig\n" > /tmp/inst.sh
chmod a+x /tmp/inst.sh
su -m -l root --command="/tmp/inst.sh"
rm /tmp/inst.sh

echo "installation of $PACKAGE successfull :-)"
exit 0

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