Packages for RedHat 4.2, Debian 1.3

Goran Brostrom <gb@stat.umu.se> writes:

I tried it on my newly installed RH 4.2 system (as root):

# rpm -i r-base-.....rpm
failed dependencies:
     /usr/bin/perl is needed by r-....
     /bin/sh  is needed by r-....
     /bin/sh     is needed by r-...

I have those guys, and I was running sh. I guess that I don't know enough
about RedHat and rpms (I know nothing...). What is the correct way to=20
do the installation?

There are two kinds of dependencies:
1) Libraries against which the executable files in a package are linked
2) Programs required by scripts in the package

The version of rpm which ships with RedHat 4.2 (version 2.3) expects
only the first kind of dependency. It can't interpret the entries
/bin/sh ... etc in the dependency list. 

Version 2.4 of rpm _does_ expect both kinds of dependencies, so
one way round this problem is to install the latest version of rpm.
This is available in the directory /redhat-4.2/updates/i386 on
RedHat's ftp site. (Don't pick up the one in the redhat-5.0 directory
as this is linked against libc6 which you don't have). This isn't
a very good solution, but it is a solution. Ultimately you might find it
easier to do the unzip/untar/configure/make procedure.

My problem in making these packages is that I generate them under
Debian GNU/Linux as .deb packages then use an automatic transformation
program to create the RedHat Linux .rpm packages.  Since I don't use
rpm for installation myself it is difficult for me to test them.  I
know what the Debian package installer does when it checks
dependencies but I don't know where rpm looks to satisfy dependencies.

This one is more of a backward compatibility problem. IMHO supporting
old releases of Linux distributions is too difficult. This position may
seem a bit extreme, but Linux evolves in "internet time".

Maybe we can try a bit more with installation of the RedHat packages
and if people are still encountering problems like this then we'll
punt and ask others to build the .rpm packages on RedHat systems.

I remain at your disposal.
Martyn
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