On 2/28/07, Sangeeta Varma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hello,

I have an urgent requirement to be able to deliver a binary in an RPM
with an unknown group name, at the rpm build time.  The Group name will
be known only at install time.

On solaris with packages, its possible to support this using the
"request" scripts to get input from the package installer and a
variable for the group name in the prototype file.

Can anyone let me know if something like this is doable with RPMs ? I
haven't found any information on this. Any pointers will be much
appreciated.

Please cc me onthe response as I am not yet subscribed to this alias.
Thanks!
Sangeeta
I'm very familiar with this feature of solaris packaging and the short
answer is no.

RPM has never supported a way to query the user for anything.  The on
going mantra is that rpms should be installed non-interactively and
that giving some interactive capability would break automated
installers.  This of course is not true if
done in a similar way to Solarises package manager.

Essentially the Solaris package manager allows setup a package to ask
custom questions, the answer of which can be supplied by an
administratively supplied config file.  This could be done in rpm
also.  You would need to take it one step further such that it would
not break an automated installer, and mandetorily enforce that default
answers be supplied in the spec, such that any querying could be
reasonably turned off by an installer while yet still allowing for the
use of the package admin files.  So that is one way that this can be
achieved.

Another way that one could achieve this is via the use of install time
expansion of macros.  This actually can be used to solve many problems
in rpm; in particular though it would give the effect of the solaris
package admin files without ever seeing
a query.  One could even check to see if a particular macro was expanded or not
and die if it was not.

Either of these approaches are completely new features to rpm (though
the later is more easily achieved).  This means that someone would
have to code these features, and it would take a good while for them
to make it to the mainstream distributions.  Also, you would need to
find someone interested in doing this work, or you would have to do it
yourself.

So you can see why I said the simple answer is no.   With some devoted
cycles though you can reach the harder to achieve yes.

Cheers...james
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