[indiana-discuss] Better update and product/software installation control

[BVK Chaitanya]

Hi Roger,

I do not have any expertise in this area, i am just trying to
understand the advantage you mentioned.

Roger Marquis <marquis at roble.com> writes:

> Maintaining a port is so much easier than maintaining an RPM. I'm
> talking night and day. With ports you don't have to generate a
> distinct specfile or build a separate binary package for every OS
> version (multiplied by) every architecture. All you need is the
> makefile and a few patches. When a new release comes out most of
> the time all you need change is the makefile's version numbers
> (assuming patches still apply cleanly, and most of the time they
> do).

This means, packages' source/makefiles should be protable. If they are
really protable, can't we automate creating/maintaining rpms/debs ?

Also, above advantage increases the package installation time at the
end-user, isn't it? Download, compile and install procedure takes a
lot of time for packages like emacs compared to download and install
binaries.

-- 
bvk-chaitanya