Re: How to build RHEL software to run on Debian?

["Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@familiasanchez.net>]

Matt England wrote:
> I'm a software developer, and I would like one set of software binaries 
> (applications, libraries) to be able to run across many Linux platforms, 
> including FedoraCore, Redhat Enterprise Linux, and Debian (much the same 
> way XAMPP -- http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html -- claims that 
> its one Linux binary distribution runs on all SuSE, Redhat, Mandrake, 
> and Debian).
>
> What sort of things must I do as a developer to do this?
>
> Should I carry as many of the dynamically-linked libraries around with 
> my distribution?  Should these include libc/glibc in my own distribution 
> set?
>
> Anything else?
>
> Is this a worthwhile endeavor?  Have people tried this before?  
> Obviously it appears to be a key point for XAMPP (per above) and I 
> suspect many more software sets.  It sure would be nice for my project 
> to have one binary for many systems--it really cuts down on my 
> build-control logistics.
>
> I'm just getting started in this investigation.  I may be posting to 
> several different Linux communities (newsgroups, email lists, forums, 
> etc).   I started with the Debian community because I have a build 
> environment on RHEL, and am porting to Debian.
>
>  Thanks for any help.
>
> -Matt
>
> ps: I am very familiar and have over a decade of experience with 
> managing software projects that make portable code across 8 different 
> unix variants, VMS, and several Windows flavors.  Therefore, I'd like 
> this discussion to focus primarily on how to make the *binaries* 
> portable and not the _code_ portable.  Thanks.

I'd say that portable binaries are even tougher than portable code. 
Making your app so that it can run from its own self-contained hierarchy 
from /usr/local/foo or /opt/foo would probably be the easiest.  Other 
than that, I believe that there are tools that spec files and try to 
generate .debs (I don't mean like alien, but rather building a .deb from 
an RPM spec).  I imagine that there are probably also tools to do the 
reverse.

Of course, if the package is not very complex, i.e., does not require 
any pre- or post- install or removal actions and can just drop in and 
go, then you can probably just generate one form of package and use 
alien to convert to the other.

Personally, I would just try to get someone to volutneer to maintain the 
software in whatever target distro you like.  Personally, I am not often 
compelled to go to 3rd parties for software and am much more likely to 
use something if it is already in the official Debian archive.  I am not 
sure if users of other distros are of the same opinion, but I imagine 
that many are.

-Roberto

--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto