Fwd: Inclusion of Ingres RDBMS in Fedora
 

Hello Fedora Devs,

Over the last few weeks, I spent a lot of time review and amending the
Ingres (a highly scalable, full-featured open source RDBMS) building and
packaging process with the intention of submitting it for inclusion in
the Fedora distribution. We've had binary RPM support for a while but
was far from being LSB compliant and violated other packaging standards.

The focus of the work has largely been based on information found at:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:ReviewGuidelines
&
http://proton.pathname.com/fhs/

and I am now at a point where I can build 3 binary RPMs (ingres-client,
ingres-server, ingres-devel) which comply with the above guidelines and
which cause rpmlint to return very few errors. However, one major thing
that is still missing is the ability to build an SRPM for the source
tree and crafting an SPEC file for this is the next thing on my task
list. As I think this will be a fairly substantial undertaking and
something I'm not very familiar with, I'm keen to get some advice and
guidance with the project in the hopes of getting things done right (or
at least more right) the first time. Also, there are a few issues that
have arisen from building the binary RPMs that I would like to get
clarification (i.e. how much of a problem are they) on before starting
on the SRPM spec:

* Ingres requires that the server executable is setuid (non-root)
* Current build process uses $ORIGIN for relative RPATH linking.
* Executable stack code

If the best approach is "write the spec, follow the guidelines, create a
Bugzilla issue and we'll go from there", then that is what I will do. If
I can gain experience by assisting in with the packaging of other
software for fedora then I'm happy to do this too.

If this is the wrong list for this posting, apologies and please direct
me to the appropriate forum.

Thanks in advance,

Jay Hankinson
Senior Developer
Ingres Emerging Technologies Team



--
devel mailing list
devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel

Fwd: Inclusion of Ingres RDBMS in Fedora
 

Hi Jay!

On 02/23/2010 04:09 AM, Jay Hankinson wrote:
[ ... ]
> * Ingres requires that the server executable is setuid (non-root)

Actually I don't know any >rules< that speak against this. However, if
it's really needed, then we cannot really do anything against it. And if
there's a rule that speaks against it, there's usually also a 'this is
the way to fix it' guide :-)

> * Current build process uses $ORIGIN for relative RPATH linking.

RPath is bad - And really is something that needs to be fixed; No
matter which OS and/or distribution we are talking about!

> * Executable stack code

And? :-) I'm not too familiar with NX. However, nobody will force you to
compile it with no-exec-stack :-)

> If the best approach is "write the spec, follow the guidelines, create a
> Bugzilla issue and we'll go from there", then that is what I will do. If
> I can gain experience by assisting in with the packaging of other
> software for fedora then I'm happy to do this too.

I (personally) really appreciate your wish to include Ingres. I'm not
working with Ingres, but I'm always happy to get in touch with new
databases; Since it's (also) part of my job :-)

And yes, the best way is to craft a specfile and follow the guidelines.

If you need assistance in packaging, please don't hesitate to contact me...

Best,
Oliver
--
devel mailing list
devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel

Fwd: Inclusion of Ingres RDBMS in Fedora
 

On 2/23/10 12:07 AM, Oliver Falk wrote:
> Hi Jay!
>
> On 02/23/2010 04:09 AM, Jay Hankinson wrote:
> [ ... ]
>
>> * Ingres requires that the server executable is setuid (non-root)
>>
> Actually I don't know any>rules< that speak against this. However, if
> it's really needed, then we cannot really do anything against it. And if
> there's a rule that speaks against it, there's usually also a 'this is
> the way to fix it' guide :-)
>
rpmlint flagged it, which is really why I mentioned it. Increasingly
looking like it's not going to be an issue though. :-)
>
>> * Current build process uses $ORIGIN for relative RPATH linking.
>>
> RPath is bad - And really is something that needs to be fixed; No
> matter which OS and/or distribution we are talking about!
>
Regular RPath, yes I agree entirely. $ORIGIN allows relative linking wrt
to the binary location and is (as I understand it) as secure as anything
else. As I said, I can work around it though.
>
>> * Executable stack code
>>
> And? :-) I'm not too familiar with NX. However, nobody will force you to
> compile it with no-exec-stack :-)
>
>
>> If the best approach is "write the spec, follow the guidelines, create a
>> Bugzilla issue and we'll go from there", then that is what I will do. If
>> I can gain experience by assisting in with the packaging of other
>> software for fedora then I'm happy to do this too.
>>
> I (personally) really appreciate your wish to include Ingres. I'm not
> working with Ingres, but I'm always happy to get in touch with new
> databases; Since it's (also) part of my job :-)
>
> And yes, the best way is to craft a specfile and follow the guidelines.
>
> If you need assistance in packaging, please don't hesitate to contact me...
>
Thank you, that's really encouraging to hear. I've been trying to get
this project underway for over a year. Very glad to be moving forward
with it at last. I will no doubt be sending questions this way on a
regular basis.
> Best,
> Oliver
>
--
devel mailing list
devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel