egoshin | # 181 | 2010-02-19, 20:01 | Report

Exactly!

Actually - NO. If you want to port, there is no difference where you get the sources. In most cases you get it's last version from sourceforge or application web site and that would be in .tar file.

The only exclusion - if you port a system maintenance application which works in the same model as your debian-based system AND your window manager. So, Gnome vs KDE plays role but DEB vs RPM - not.

fatalsaint | # 182 | 2010-02-19, 20:03 | Report

If a certain package required changes to compile on ARM/ARMEL and debian has already done that for us.. we can simply take the debian deb and repackage the binaries.. or grab the sources from debian with the changes.

I remember having to modify a few things to get KDE4 to compile right for debian on the N810... this was before debian had ARM ports in their repo's for it.

So.. having a major distribution supporting your architecture certainly does help with porting... however - there's no reason one can't use the debian sources in this case and build an RPM instead.

egoshin | # 183 | 2010-02-19, 20:09 | Report

There is a chance that changes for ARM/ARMEL do exist in RPM source repositories too. Usually the package maintainers supports ALL platforms and if somebody needs yet-another platform then they include that fixes as well and with thanks to proposed changes. I never seen the situation then changes to some platform doesn't go it's way to original source... besides the very platform-specific applications, of course.

fatalsaint | # 184 | 2010-02-19, 20:13 | Report

Except that the ARMEL repositories of RPM distributions are so utterly pathetic when compared to debians.

That's the debate. Why would RPM sources have the change when their distro doesn't cross-compile or maintain an active ARM repo? That would be pointless.

Anyway.. it's all moot: As long as there already is an ARM port of it somewhere.. it's stupid simple to make either a deb or rpm from it to fit our needs.

rushman | # 185 | 2010-02-19, 20:23 | Report

Hi,
Has any one actualy used Moblin.

I am at present and its not Fedora. Mine
is Open suse Moblin although still using rpm's
KDE and Debian programs seem to be
available

fatalsaint | # 186 | 2010-02-19, 20:27 | Report

1) Yes

2) That's because there isn't really "debian" programs so much as debian has packaged publicly available programs and so has Moblin.. and Fedora and Mandriva and so on.

What specifically do you mean by a "KDE and Debian program"?

I'm pretty sure I tried to run "dpkg -i" on moblin just for giggles and got a command not found.

SubCore | # 187 | 2010-02-19, 20:28 | Report

still...
one of the benefits of having a huge armel repo is that you also don't have to worry about dependencies much. you take the control file 1:1 and just rebuild what's missing, again not having to fiddle with the packaging files.

i imagine lots of possible errors in package dependencies, multiple packages and so on.

it's not difficult of course, still much easier than porting from scratch, but prone to errors IMHO.

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Last edited by SubCore; 2010-02-19 at 20:32. Reason: vocabulary *g*

fatalsaint | # 188 | 2010-02-19, 20:30 | Report

Sure.. any time you add steps you open for more unforeseen circumstances.

It's just, at this point, it's not going to change.. so why bother? Technically, anything we need is still possible.. it's just going to require a little more work to get it to where we need it.

egoshin | # 189 | 2010-02-19, 20:55 | Report

Because sources are maintained not from RPM but from developers sites which take care about all distributions.

Source RPMs (or DEBs) have a big sense for system management software like start/stop interface, catching mesg about unlocking device etc. And that sources are pretty uniq to architecture ... well to a specific distribution, actually... big and reach repos from other distributions don't help too much here...

ewan | # 190 | 2010-02-19, 21:08 | Report

Not so much. Quite often distribution packages carry patches that upstream hasn't taken, or indeed has refused to take. If upstream doesn't care about arm support (and a lot don't) it is quite possible that Debian is one of the few places that will have code that compiles for arm.