RPMs and *.desktop files

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

> >^^^ It might not be a good idea to make rpm packages that try to work on
> >multiple distros.  YMMV.
> >  
> >
> I'm a little surprised by this. I thought one of the goals of these 
> standards was to help making Linux distros and desktop environments more 
> compatible with each other.

Due to each distribution having their own naming standards, their own
set of packages, different actual .so.x libraries in the packages, and
so on, it is really hard to make rpms that work on lots of distros,
especially when the software has less than the most trivial of
dependencies, or needs some sort of desktop/distro integration.

When you do succeed, you probably used so many hacks/workarounds and the
package will be worse than a package made for the actual distribution. 
So in general, my opinion is to just not try doing this.  Personally, I
very seldomly install packages that are for a different version of my
distro, even...

If you want to experience it firsthand, how about this.  Try building a
system with 1/3 mdk packages, 1/3 suse packages and 1/3 fedora packages.

Anyway, as I said, my two cents - I'm sure other people believe that it
is still possible to package cross-distro.

Thomas


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