[CentOS-devel] there's something happened between kernel 2.6.28-128.1.1 and 2.6.18-128.1.6 compilation

Mon Apr 20 14:24:16 UTC 2009
Jeff Johnson <n3npq at mac.com>

On Apr 20, 2009, at 8:46 AM, Farkas Levente wrote:

>>
>> SRPM's are produced on a machine with an arch, and so results can/ 
>> will
>> vary.
>>
>> Your instinct is correct.
>>
>> But the kernel.spec has always been hugely complicated.
>
> Jeff as you're the rpm developer the question is:
> - it's kernel bug (eg. kernel's spec is wrong)
> - it's an rpm bug (rpm generate wrong require list)
> - it's a build system bug (the build system setup faulty)
> - or it's not a bug at all this should have to be in this way if the
> src.rpm generated on i386 arch?
>

All depends on POV. E.g. The Debian Borg considers RPM itself to be  
the bug. ;-)

This is one of the two pleasant lies in RPM: reproducible builds.
(The other lie is install "transactions" which implies no side  
effects ...)

 From a CentOS POV:

CentOS is attempting to rebuild RHEL *.rpm's with no (or at least
minimal) changes. So ultimately the CentOS build system is to blame
because not achieving the stated goal.

OTOH, the kernel build is one of the packages that *IS* slightly
modified in CentOS and, as Karabiner has pointed out, the spec file
may need a tweak.

> if you said the srpms are arch dependent then the whole setup (rhel,
> centos, dag and all repos) where there is only one dir for srpms for  
> all
> dir is wrong. or ...?

The expectation is that SRPMS build everywhere, yes.

One directory for SRPM's makes sense iff the necessary QA
to guarantee "reproducible builds" has been done. Which
CentOS does at least as well as RHEL ;-)

hth

73 de Jeff