Re: Lag between source and packages

[John Beimler <klug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >One of the things I have noted is that there's a lag between the release of a
> >product and the time someone packages it into an RPM. 
> 
> I tried to do my part to help out on this by making a .tar.gz into an RPM, but
> something about the process still eludes me. The Debian package format seems a
> good deal simpler to comprehend and use; I'm also playing around with ALIEN,
> which translates from one package format to another. [...]

Another good way to build a quick RPM is to look and see if the author has
the definition on how to do that in the tar.gz.  The file extension is usually
.spec.  The other way is to find the source RPM (SRPM) for the package.  It
will have the .spec file, and you can usually build the new version from there.
If you do write/have a spec file for a package, mail it to the
authors/maintainers of the package, most likely they will be happy to include
it with the source, if works and is set up correctly.

A really good package to look at for this is samba.  If you get the source,
in packaging/RedHat there is a shell script called makerpms.sh.

Hope this helps.

john