Building RPMS for Erlang R6B, some questions.

[Per Hedeland]

David Gould <davidg@REDACTED> wrote:
>I am building the recent Erlang source release (R6B) and am trying to make
>RPM packages for x86 Linux for it, mostly for the chance to do two new things
>at the same time.
>
>[apologies if this is double posted, but I didn't see it on the list
> the first time]

You sent a message about this to erlang-maintainers only on the 24th
(and haven't gotten a reply to that yet, shame on us:-).

>Anyway, a couple of questions:
>
> - if I succeed and make a good .src.rpm and .ix86.rpm for Erlang would
>   there be enough interest to post these on the erlang.org site for
>   general consumption?

Definitely. The reason there aren't RPMS for R6B there is basically lack
of time and know-how on our part. However, I think the ideal solution
would be for you (or anyone) to tell us (in simple words:-) how to build
them, and we'll do that and put them there. It's not that I don't trust
you:-), but putting up binary distributions received from someone else
makes me uneasy, as a matter of principle.

Also, Mustafa Kocaturk sent us an RPM spec (and pointed out that I had
blown it on the old tclPosixStr.c patch:-) that he had created and was
using to build an RPM. I suggested that he should hold off until I'd put
up the additional patches that are now on the web site, but I don't know
what his plans are. Anyway I'm enclosing his spec below in case it helps
(it's all greek to me:-).

>   And, would it be useful to submit them to eg, rpmfind, or Mandrake
>   contrib or whatever?

I've no idea, but the wider distribution the better...:-)

> - for RPMS of Erlang, I can build either a barebones i386, will run anywhere
>   version, and/or an optimized version for eg i586 and up. Preferences?

As far as putting on the web site goes, we can certainly do both, if
only one I guess barebones is preferable.

> - Finally, I noticed a lot (about four hundred) of apparently harmless
>   compilation warnings during the build from both the C and the Erlang
>   sources. My experience is that it is easier to maintain and enhance, or
>   even make RPMS for a code tree that compiles completely cleanly. That
>   way it is easy to tell what broke, since _any_ messages mean that your
>   change or environment has a problem.
>
>   Is there any thought of cleaning any of this up? I would be happy to pitch
>   in and provide patches for some of it (say most of the C files on x86
>   Linux?). Is there enough interest in this to make it worthwhile? That is,
>   can I get such a patch adopted? Would anyone else care to help?

It *should* be cleaned up of course, and contributions are always
welcome - I can't at the present time give any promises about such
patches getting folded into the actual distribution though, there is
always the tedious matter of making sure they don't break things on
other platforms, and the necessary prioritization (is that a word?:-)
between fixing things that are really broken and those that are "just"
annoying.

Thanks
--Per Hedeland
per@REDACTED

otp_R6B-0.spec-----------------------------------------------------------
#    -*- Fundamental -*- 
Summary: Erlang/OTP BEAM Emulator Implementation
Name: otp
%define version R6B
Version: %{version}
Release: 0
%define srcname otp_src_%{version}-%{release}
%define pname tmp_patch_%{version}%{release}
Copyright: Erlang Public License Version 1.0 (http://www.erlang.org/EPL1_0.txt)
Group: Development/Languages
Source: http://www.erlang.org/download/%{srcname}.tar.gz
URL: http://www.erlang.org
Vendor: Ericsson Utveckling AB
Packager: Mustafa.Kocaturk@REDACTED
Provides: otp erlang erlang-gs_apps erlang-otp_libs
Patch0: %{pname}.1.txt
Patch1: %{pname}.2.txt
Patch2: %{pname}.3.txt

%description 
The Erlang/OTP base system --- Erlang is a programming language which
has many features more commonly associated with an operating system
than with a programming language: concurrent processes, scheduling,
memory management, distribution, networking, etc.  OTP stands for Open
Telecommunication Platform, and provides an interface between Erlang
applications and the underlying host operating system.

This package contains all the executables and Erlang source files
required to run and develop programs using Erlang, OTP, Erlang
Graphics System (GS), and Erlang Applications bundled with the Open
Source Erlang.

HTML documents and Unix manual pages are excluded, but
available as separate packages.

%prep

# rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%setup -n %{srcname}

%patch0
%patch1
%patch2

%build
./configure

make

%install

make install

%clean

# rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%files
/usr/local/lib/erlang
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/man

%doc README