[CentOS] Recompiling source rpms for i386, i686 and x86_64 on the same box?

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Mister IT Guru <misteritguru at gmx.com> wrote:

> I'm not 100% comfortable with mixing server tasks - especially when the
> boxes are managed using puppet - (google it, puppet is frikkin awesome!)
> I always assumed that with paravirtualisation that I'll get near native
> speeds. Either way, whatever the needs determine - it seems that
> building a mock environment is the way to go. I'm looking for a mock
> mailing list, but I guess either this list or the fedora list should be
> sufficient, right?

The problem is that the "server" may not be pristine, and may
introduce some very strange dependencies and inconsistencies for your
RPM's. One RPM requires samba-server? No problem! Another for a third
party Samba utilities requires their cifs-utils? No problem! Until you
try to install them both at the same time on the same server.......
Then you need a flexible, replaceable, rebuildable and stripped down
environment used only for building the relevant RPM's. Mock gives
exactly this, with alternative configurations for RPM's based on EPEL,
or on RPMforge, to satisfy dependencies as configured by your local
author.

It's pretty sweet, and the recent versions of it much, much faster and
smaller than the old ones.