I find it much easier to track the software on my systems if I use makefiles and RPMS to build and track my software. I am enclosing both the makefile and the rpm specfile I used to build and deploy twiki. I hope you include these files in the toplevel of the next twiki release. These make your installation instructions much easier to get right the first time and allow me to version control my releases.

TwikiMakeFile TwikiSpecFile

-- KenEstes - 04 Oct 2001

This looks quite useful - presumably the /var/www paths in the spec file make this somewhat specific to Red Hat and similar variants? It would be good to do an RPM spec file that is LSB (Linux Standard Base) compliant, so it could install on Suse and other LSB-compliant Linux systems (and even Debian, which will use alien to convert RPMs to .deb's). Unfortunately, there will be many Unix/Linux systems that don't use RPMs, or have directories in different places, meaning a TWikiUnixInstaller is still needed.

One issue with using RPMs is that root access is required, which is fairly unusual on many intranet servers and with TWikiOnWebHostingSites. Probably the best place for this is as part of work on a TWikiUnixInstaller, as an optional installation format.

-- RichardDonkin - 01 Apr 2002

Where does RPM require root? I think from the article below it can be used differently:

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/s1-rpm-anywhere-different-build-area.html

search for 'non-root'

I agree that having RPMs for TWiki would be a huge bonus (so hat's off to Ken for doing the initial work - "Thanks Ken")

-- MartinCleaver - 05 Apr 2002

That article is all about building RPMs - I was talking about installing RPMs, where I have found that rpm -ivh foo.rpm requires root in order to update the RPM package database. It's possible that more recent RPM versions have a way round this. Also, you could perhaps use a separate package database, since TWiki doesn't have many dependencies, but I'm not sure if RPM supports that.

-- RichardDonkin - 05 Apr 2002

I think also that allow TWiki installation by RPM would be very usefull. And RPM packaging is more or less the standard quick way to install an application on Linux platform. Many people don't take more than two minutes to try to install a software.

-- JeanPierreMatsumoto - 08 Jun 2002

I also prefer packages over tarballs. But there is a reason, while so much SW comes without packages: there are dozens of package formats. RPMs cover only one of the many TWiki platforms. If you seriously consider packaging, have a look at EPM: http://www.easysw.com/epm

A free UNIX software/file packaging program that generates distribution archives from a list of files. EPM Can:

• Generate portable script-based distribution packages complete with installation and removal scripts.
• Generate vendor distributions in AIX, BSD, Compaq Tru64, Debian, HP-UX, IRIX, Red Hat, and Solaris formats.
• Provide a complete, cross-platform software distribution solution for your applications.

I must admit, I have no experience with it (yet). Learnt about it, just after I ported a huge package from Solaris to HP-UX (grrrrrnnn). But it does sound very promising.

-- PeterKlausner - 12 Jun 2002

initial EPM work checked into http://svn.twiki.org/svn/twiki/branches/DEVELOP/tools/distro/epm/

-- WillNorris - 05 Mar 2005