binary rpm repos?

[Brian Forte]

Gentlefolk,

Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
>It turns out RPM works fine on Mac:
>
>http://rpm4darwin.sourceforge.net/

Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat but am writing here entirely on my own 
time and with my own voice. Nothing that follows can or should be 
construed as representing Red Hat's opinion or position on anything 
at all.

At risk of igniting an argument I believe it's worth noting there are 
two active RPM projects.

The [RPM 4.x project][1] is maintained by Panu Matilainen, who works 
for Red Hat. The [RPM 5.x project][2] is maintained by Jeff Johnson, 
who used to work for Red Hat.

Both projects are GPL-licensed and both are in active development. 
RPM 4.6 came out 2009/02/06 and 4.7 beta 1 was released 2009/02/26. 
RPM 5.1.7 came out 2009/03/07, the same day as RPM 5.2a3.

The entire ['rpm controversy'][3] happened before I joined Red Hat 
and I'm absolutely not interested in a debate about which project is 
'official' or better or improves your charisma most.

Just FYI, I have exactly the same lack-of-any-sort-of-relationship 
with Matliainen as I do with Johnson: I've not met, corresponded or 
otherwise interacted with either of them. (Also, if the [Supported 
Linux Distributions][4] discussion on the Wikipedia Talk page for 
their RPM Package Manager article is anything to go by, Jeff Johnson 
doesn't want the controversy re-hashed.)

Although I know very little about the RPM 5 project, the 
straight-forward mechanics of forked projects suggest it is unwise to 
assume an rpm package built to work with the RPM 4.x project code 
will work seamlessly with an RPM 5-based installation (or vice versa).

This would especially be the case for packages built using versions 
of either RPM project released since Red Hat relaunched the 4.x 
project in May 2007. Since that relaunch, both projects have 
proceeded apace with their code-bases inevitably diverging as a 
consequence.

NB: I'm not saying there will be a problem. RPM 5 uses the RPM 4 
package format and the [RPM 4 FAQ][4] notes, among other things, that

     RPM [4] will stay backward compatible to 4.4.2
     for a quite long time. (sic)

Nonetheless the two projects are separate and, so far as I'm aware, 
aren't checking their changes against each other to ensure everything 
works perfectly between the two. Most specifically, there are 
differences between the projects concerning what is and isn't 
supported in an rpm package's .spec file.

All of which is a long-winded way of suggesting it's possible an rpm 
package prepared for use against one RPM project might behave in an 
unexpected way if that package is then installed, managed or 
otherwise interacted with by the other RPM.

The rpm4darwin project noted by Alexy Khrabrov above is based on RPM 
5. If you're grabbing binary rpm packages from 'rpm-based distros' 
such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE or 
Mandriva, however, these RPMs were built using RPM 4.

Finally, and FWIW, there are portfiles available for RPM [4.x and 
5.x][6], although the 5.x portfiles are closer to being in sync with 
upstream.

Regards,

Brian Forte.

[1]: <http://rpm.org/>
[2]: <http://rpm5.org/>
[3]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager#Controversy>
[4]: 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:RPM_Package_Manager#Supported_Linux_distributions>
[5]: <http://rpm.org/wiki/Docs/RpmOrgFAQ>
[6]: <http://macports.org/ports.php?by=name&substr=rpm>
-- 
Brian Forte
mailto:bforte at adelaide.on.net
http://betweenborders.com/
insert witty rejoinder here