On 02/06/2012 11:22 AM, Adam Bishop wrote:
> Good Afternoon,
>
> I have a couple of questions about how portable code built on various EL's is between OS's/versions.
>
> If I build an RPM on SL6.1 from an arbitrary SRPM that has not been specifically targeted for EL6, has no distribution-specific, version-specific or renamed dependancies, how portable can I expect it to be?
>
> Would I just be able to drop it onto a CentOS6.2 or TUV6.0 system, for example, and have it just work.
>
> Assuming the answer is no:
>    * What steps/build settings/macros are needed to make it cross-version portable (SL 6.1, 6.0, 6.n)?
>    * What steps/build settings/macros are needed to make it cross-distribution compatible (SL, CentOS, TUV, etc.)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam Bishop
> JANET(UK) is a trading name of The JNT Association, a company limited
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If we've done our job right (and you've got all your packages), the rpm 
_should_ be portable to TUV or any other rebuild of theirs.  That being 
said the real test is does the output from rpm -qp --requires <your_rpm> 
exist on the other distributions.  This can be particularly sticky going 
from 6.1 to 6.0.  If your rpm uses something that was a 
bugfix/enhancement released in the later version then you may have some 
minor issues which can be fixed by updating the older packages.

For example, something built against the latest version of libuuid (from 
6.2) will not necessarily like the libuuid from 6.0 (there have been 
some fixes)

Pat

-- 
Pat Riehecky
Scientific Linux Developer