rpm-4.1 successful compile on Cygwin

[Charles Wilson]

Max Bowsher wrote:

>>I thought that rpm-4.x required Berkeley db-4.x -- which has not yet
>>been officially added to the cygwin distro.  AFAIK, we have db2 and
>>db3, but not db4.  How did you satisfy that dependency?
> 
> 
> RPM includes a copy of Berkerly DB in its source tarball, and will build
> with the internal db unless explicitly told to try using the system db.

Oh, ok.  If anybody wants to add rpm to the cygwin distribution as a 
supported package, though, it ought to use a system-provided db4 
library.  Which means somebody needs to give Nicholas a swift kick in 
the tookas (Hi, Nicholas. <g>)

> In fact, I'm not sure if that mode would work at all, since configure.ac
> makes extensive mention of db3, but no mention of db4. (The db4 in rpm is
> actually configured in a directory called db3 - weird!).

Well, that sounds like somebody took some shortcuts. OTOH, since Red Hat 
Linux uses rpm as its fundamental package manager, it makes sense for 
them to prefer a statically-linked binary of rpm -- and to highly 
control *EXACTLY* how that static binary is built.

So they include their own copy of Berk DB, build it as a static lib, 
link against it, etc.

However, if, during the upgrade from db3 to db4, they took shortcuts in 
the configury, then the rpm-4.x source is *broken* and they need to fix 
it.  Just because *Red Hat* doesn't care about dynamic linking to 
external db libs, doesn't mean that they should (silently) disallow it. 
  They have the power/authority to make that decision -- but it should 
be well-documented and not simply be a hidden gotcha.

Going by this principle: "Never attribute to maliciousness that which 
can be explained by stupidity", I'd  bet that IF external linking is 
broken, then it was a simple oversight and they'd welcome patches to fix 
the problem.

But tracking that down and creating those patches would be the job of 
the person who actually wanted to add rpm.exe to the cygwin dist, and 
intends to support it. (e.g. not you, Max).

--Chuck



--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/