Re: [PATCH v3] To make GIT-VERSION-FILE, search for git more widely

Le Saturday 09 May 2009 18:55:09 Junio C Hamano, vous avez écrit : [...]

Well, maybe not if you just download the source and use the "configure/make/make install" trinity. But when it comes to packaging, it's another story.

I've been doing RPM packaging for quite a few years. I have been fortunate enough that my first job was with a Linux distribution (it was called Mandrake at the time) and, first things first, they taught me how to set up an RPM environment to build as a regular user.

Believe it or not, but even as of today, in 2009, neither RHEL or its immediate derivative (CentOS) manage to build a decent set of rules to build as a non-root user. You have to make your own $HOME/.rpmmacros at the very least. So, unless you are a skilled enough packager, you cannot even build a package as a regular user. And some packages out there DO require skills as a packager to just be built as packages (qmail is one example).

And even as a regular user, and even though you can, say, alter all of /usr/local to be writeable by someone else than root, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a LOT of Linux beginners, seeing that "make install doesn't work", resort to being root instead. Because it is a known fact that root can do everything.

Innovative? Not that much.