removal suggestion: port rpm

[Anders F Björklund]

Clemens Lang wrote:

> while going over package1.0[1] for this year's GSoC project I noticed
> some problems in where port rpm (implemented in portrpm.tcl[2]) puts the
> generated rpm packages (specifically a missing default value for
> package.destpath).

Specifically, it puts the packages in the RPM default output directory
(under /opt/local/src/macports) and not in the "usual" work directory.

> I considered attempting to fix those, but it is not
> clear to me what purpose this code ever served and I don't think it is
> still being used.

It was used to build stand-alone rpm packages, similar to the pkg ones.
Then you could install those without building from port, only using rpm.


> Is anyone still using port rpm/srpm/dpkg? If not I would remove those
> and their dependencies.
> 
> To: Anders, because he was the last to commit a functional change to
> srpm and rpm.

It made sense for platforms, such as PureDarwin (nee OpenDarwin), that
wanted to avoid using a proprietary package manager like installer(8)
The added features, like better compression and an uninstall feature,
was mostly bonus. At the time, there was no receipts database* either.

* see pkgutil(1)

Since the rpms/srpms aren't being maintained or built within MacPorts,
there's something self-fulfilling of them not being used by more users.
I don't think anyone ever used the dpkg backend, it was probably more
of a "because we could" ? There was always Fink, if you wanted .deb ?


Now that there isn't a supported version of Darwin OS available anymore
(PureDarwin is 10.5, and OpenDarwin was 10.3), and nobody cares about
whether the packaging source code that they are running is open or not, 
I think that the .pkg format would be a more "popular" second choice.

So I can see why you don't want to support RPM, and if you don't then
I too think that it could be removed rather than just left to rot away.
My proposal for the GSoC was to improve the information in the archives
so that they would be "packages" and could use pkgng* (from FreeBSD).

* https://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng


But I think there is a lot of work to be done with the ports packaging,
whether you want to use the .rpm or the .txz format for storing them...

There needs to be (better) binary versioning of dependencies, and a way
to store (and run) the package scripts, before pkg(1) could work OK ?

There's some cleanup in the rpm ports needed as well, but there is a
separate ticket or two for that already and it's different from base.

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/38456
http://trac.macports.org/ticket/36318

--anders


PS. Can we get rid of the dmg and mdmg as well, while house-cleaning ?

Those are only needed for the (unsupported) Tiger, without the "flat"