Patches on Packages

Jza · Post by **Jza** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 9:49 pm

I think linc brought a great point about the packages and the way they are installed on the distro. And how slackware apply few or no patches to the original source. I would like to see more documented issues in this regards as it is really what makes ur distro feel speey or feel like a cow.

I mean I really struggle seen the point of using a distro over another one, I havent seen yet a point this whole distro war from a pragmatic point of view. Every one argues what they 'feel on their boxes' and really if I give a crap about feelings i would be a girl.

Now Linc brought a very logical point on this distro war, the ammount of messing up distros do for the sake of looking cute. And to what degree things end up becoming a mess or how to avoid it.

The distro lock-in is really something that I see as a challenge for the Linux geek. I definetly have tried before -- and failed installing LFS on my test system. I will eventually get a handle of it and start becoming more knowledgable about the whole system Gentoo is a great step toward that. And even if knowing your desktop might not be acutally useful knowing Linux might be.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 5:16 am

If you want to know what patches that different distros apply to KDE, you can check this out: http://developer.kde.org/~binner/distributor-patches/

Stephan Binner from SUSE, has been so kind to collect the patches from the various distros.

Post by **dann** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:54 pm

If I am not mistaken, according to the gpl, each distro is required to publish how they patched the software along with the sources. If you look at the debian packages on the web they have extensive documentation along with their build file for the debian package. I have used this information to build software the was problematic under slackware.

Slackware also publishes the changes they make, or how they build the package in the buildfile. I never looked to deeply into SuSE or Fedora, but I suspect they are posted somewhere too.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:58 pm

dann wrote:Slackware also publishes the changes they make, or how they build the package in the buildfile. I never looked to deeply into SuSE or Fedora, but I suspect they are posted somewhere too.

Fedora and SUSE publishes SRPMs, Source RPMs if you will, that contain their patched sourcecode.

The GPL doesn't say you need to say where you changed stuff, it only requires you to publish your changed source.

Post by **dann** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:49 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:The GPL doesn't say you need to say where you changed stuff, it only requires you to publish your changed source.

No you don't but that is where good documentation comes in. And I would suspect any decent distro, or I should say the contributers to a decent distro, would document their changes.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:35 am

dann wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:The GPL doesn't say you need to say where you changed stuff, it only requires you to publish your changed source.
No you don't but that is where good documentation comes in. And I would suspect any decent distro, or I should say the contributers to a decent distro, would document their changes.

Well, I havn't noticed anything like that for most distros, I've only seen stuff like this on the web index of Debian's package pools.

I know for a fact that some of SUSE's patches are related to startup speed and some performance stuff.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:42 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:
dann wrote:Slackware also publishes the changes they make, or how they build the package in the buildfile. I never looked to deeply into SuSE or Fedora, but I suspect they are posted somewhere too.
Fedora and SUSE publishes SRPMs, Source RPMs if you will, that contain their patched sourcecode.

This is not completely true. An SRPM is basically just a source tarball, patches and a spec file. The spec file tells rpmbuild how to apply the patches and build a binary RPM.

So Fedora at least doesn't distribute patched code. They distribute pristine source tarballs and patches. SUSE may do things differently, but that is not how RPM is supposed to work.

If you want an RPM built from unpatched source, all you have to do is unpack the SRPM, comment the patch lines out of the spec file, then do 'rpmbuild -ba <specfile>'.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:53 am

Gomer_X wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:
dann wrote:Slackware also publishes the changes they make, or how they build the package in the buildfile. I never looked to deeply into SuSE or Fedora, but I suspect they are posted somewhere too.
Fedora and SUSE publishes SRPMs, Source RPMs if you will, that contain their patched sourcecode.
This is not completely true. An SRPM is basically just a source tarball, patches and a spec file. The spec file tells rpmbuild how to apply the patches and build a binary RPM.

So Fedora at least doesn't distribute patched code. They distribute pristine source tarballs and patches. SUSE may do things differently, but that is not how RPM is supposed to work.

If you want an RPM built from unpatched source, all you have to do is unpack the SRPM, comment the patch lines out of the spec file, then do 'rpmbuild -ba <specfile>'.

Thanks for correcting me on that Gomer, I can't believe I forgot about that, because I've been playing around with SRPMs for a while.

I just checked, and SUSE does do it the way you described for Fedora.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:04 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:Thanks for correcting me on that Gomer, I can't believe I forgot about that, because I've been playing around with SRPMs for a while.

I just checked, and SUSE does do it the way you described for Fedora.

I actually just spent half of last week studying up on how to build RPMs, so it's fresh in my head. I was amazed at how easy it is to build your own custom RPMs.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:08 am

Gomer_X wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:Thanks for correcting me on that Gomer, I can't believe I forgot about that, because I've been playing around with SRPMs for a while.

I just checked, and SUSE does do it the way you described for Fedora.

I actually just spent half of last week studying up on how to build RPMs, so it's fresh in my head. I was amazed at how easy it is to build your own custom RPMs.

Especially if you just grab a SRPM and modify it