[ILUG] Rebuilding RPMs

[Nick Murtagh]

On Tuesday 23 April 2002 12:08, Niall O Broin wrote:
> Yes, but I didn't even want to patch the software - all I wanted to do was
> add one switch to configure. And even if I had wanted to make a tiny patch,
> I didn't want to do it The Right Way. As you said, it's actually Not That
> Hard[tm] and you really find yourself at a fork in the road - use the raw
> source for a quick and dirty small change, but if you want to integrate the
> change properly into an RPM managed system, be prepared to do the work. No
> pain no gain springs to mind.

If you think about it though, a spec file basically describes how to build 
a piece of software. When building from source, you have to manually provide
a lot of the same information ie manually patch things, choose configure 
options. How many people bother to keep a record of what patches and config
options they've used? I certainly don't. spec files force you to do things
properly...