binary rpm repos?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Mar 8, 2009, at 17:00, Emmanuel Hainry wrote:

> The dependency does not need to be in the package, it is already in  
> the
> Portfiles. macports does not need a new (or borrowed) binary package
> format,

Agreed.

> it already builds binary packages and prefers them over
> building from source when they exist: just have a look
> in /opt/local/var/macports/packages/$system/$arch. And we even don't
> need a new option for specifying if we want to install from source or
> from binary, the switch already exists (-b).

I thought an additional problem was that software installed from a  
binary does not get registered in the registry.


> The only missing link is that port does not download those packages,
> but it should not be more difficult than what 'port mirror' does for
> distfiles! Well obviously, there is another gap: those packages
> don't get uploaded anywhere at the moment, but you should feel free to
> share your packages.

We don't want arbitrary people building packages and uploading them.  
We want a build server (or probably one build server per supported  
Mac OS X / processor combination) that automatically and predictably  
builds packages in a clean environment so we can be sure it will work  
on everyone's machine.