On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 8:47 PM, Ewan Mellor <ewan.mel...@eu.citrix.com> wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Robert Schweikert [mailto:rjsch...@suse.com] >> >> [Snip] >> >> > * We want to be able to package CloudStack in RPMs and .debs that >> correctly depend on packages available on the target platform. >> >> This is IMHO not a "job" of the project. This is up to the packagers >> and >> package maintainers for the various distros. I will maintain openSUSE >> and SLE builds in OBS and would very much prefer that the build system >> know nothing about how to build an rpm. We should maintain a "reference >> spec file" in the source tree and I will contribute to that, but having >> the build system crank out a .deb or .rpm package is just not the best >> approach. > > David, could you reply to this? You generally have opinions on how packages > should be built. I happen to disagree with the comment above, but I'm not a > packager so there's a strong chance that I haven't got a clue what I'm > talking about, and so I will do whatever people want in this regard.
So I think this is a terminology issue, perhaps. My perspective (with packager hat on) So assuming we pick $tool to replace ant. I tend to agree - $tool should not build RPMs or .debs. There are tools to build RPMs and .debs - (rpmbuild and dpkg) and they should build the packages. They will call $tool to actually build the software, but we ought not get into the loop of $tool calling rpmbuild/dpkg calling $tool. Also - $tool should have an option for turning dependency resolution off. (Maven certainly has this, and I am sure other tools do as well.) Packagers don't want dependency resolution - the guidelines they operate under don't permit bundled or automagically downloaded dependencies. Instead those need to be packaged independently and listed as a requirement (or build requirement) for the package. Any sane $tool will handle this. This doesn't mean that we wouldn't/couldn't automate RPM/deb builds in something like jenkins. We just don't want another debacle like waf. Those packages typically will not be as good as distro-maintained packages in my experience. The distro also won't be kicking out RPMs for every iteration either, so it's a mixed bag. Robert, does this adequately reflect the concerns? --David
