From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2007-05-06T03:20:10+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] pallet 1.2.1

On Sat, May 05, 2007 at 07:45:10AM +0900, Stephen Touset wrote:
> > With Pallet, you can tell it what files to bundle together to build a
> > package. But what about the initial fetch/untar/configure/build/install
> > steps? It would be very attractive to write these once in ruby (or rake),
> > but I don't think Pallet provides rules for this. Are there existing
> > libraries of rake tasks to do these steps?
> 
> Not of rake tasks, but you could easily write a rake task which downloads
> the file to somewhere predictable.

Sure, but I was thinking of using it as a generic way to package third-party
software and use it to generate, say, .deb and .rpm

RPM is what I'm more familiar with. It has a 'spec' file which directs the
build. But it has sensible default macros for:
- untar source into a work directory
- apply patch(es)
- configure
- make
- make install

You can override any of these, but the defaults work in the majority of
cases.

Now, if I had to then package the same software as .deb, I'd have to write
(and first learn) Debian control files.

If I could specify the package building once - in Ruby - that would be
great.

Regards,

Brian.