Asunder 2.1 still not in repositories?

[Ancurio]

Well, the title says it all basically.
Asunder 2.1 has been out for half a year, but I still have to compile
it from source every time I install Fedora XFCE because the preinstalled
version is still 2.0 in F15.

[mschwendt]

According to http://bugz.fedoraproject.org/asunder you haven't filed a ticket yet. Also, with your strong interest in that software, you ought to consider trying to become a Fedora Packager and co-maintainer for that package. Contacting the current packager could be a first step.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

I have filed a update request on your behalf

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=715297

[Ancurio]

I am really sorry if I sounded kind of demanding or something,
but this is just because I have almost no experience whatsoever when
it comes to how packages are maintained. According to the page of the
packager responsible for it in Fedora, he has had the 2.1 package up
for F11 the entire time, but nothing other than that. How does this all work?
Assuming from your posts, package maintainers don't regularly check up
on updates and instead rely on the community to call attention to it. I'm sorry I didn't know that.

@RahulSundaram
thank you

[RahulSundaram]

Originally Posted by Ancurio

Assuming from your posts, package maintainers don't regularly check up
on updates and instead rely on the community to call attention to it. I'm sorry I didn't know that.

@RahulSundaram
thank you

You are welcome and you have nothing to apologize for. Maintainers typically check for updates themselves but sometimes we miss out and it is useful to notify via bugzilla as a first step.

[PabloTwo]

@Ancurio- As you first stated, you've installed Asunder-2.1 from source code to get the latest release. Certainly nothing wrong with that. But it's also obvious you'd prefer to have the updated version as an rpm package. Nothing wrong with that either. Perhaps the version update request via bugzilla will bring that about in not too long a time.

But here is a suggestion. Instead of just compiling/installing from the source code tarball, build that updated tarball version into an rpm package yourself, and install/update from that. This may seem a daunting task, but with the Asunder package in particular, it's almost as easy as "falling off a rolling log". I just did this, beginning to end, including updating to the newer version via yum, in under 4 minutes total.

If you have any interest in taking this approach just let me know and I'll be more than happy to outline the steps you would need to take to do so. You might even find building your own rpm packages fun. I do.

BASH:~/-> rpm -q asunder
asunder-2.1-1.fc12.i686

Yes, I'm still running F12/XFCE.

[Ancurio]

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

If you have any interest in taking this approach just let me know and I'll be more than happy to outline the steps you would need to take to do so. You might even find building your own rpm packages fun. I do.

BASH:~/-> rpm -q asunder
asunder-2.1-1.fc12.i686

Yes, I'm still running F12/XFCE.

You know, I've actually been interested in learning how to create packages from source in general,
this is one of the pages I have consulted to get familiar with the matter.
But seeing hundreds of variables, the long spec file explanation, I temporarily gave up and just
said to myself "I'll probably leave this for the summer holidays, when I got lots of free time to get into all that".

Where there lot's of steps involved in your packaging Asunder? Would you maybe mind posting them?

[PabloTwo]

Originally Posted by Ancurio

Where there lot's of steps involved in your packaging Asunder? Would you maybe mind posting them?

Short answer, no. Actually learning spec files does take some time. Spec files can be very basic if the source code package permits it, or extremely complex, again, depending on the source code, and also depending as to whether or not you're designing your spec file to conform to strict Fedora Packaging Guidelines.

In the case of Asunder, you needn't know a danged thing about spec files, other than to make one simple edit to an already existing spec file for Asunder, which is what makes this package so simple. What you'd need to do:

Install the rpm packaging basic tools, as root:

yum install redhat-rpm-config rpm-build rpmdevtools rpmlint

Setup the rpm packaging build tree. Do the following in the top directory of your regular user account, as regular user:

rpmdev-setuptree

The above will create a new directory "rpmbuild", including appropriate sub-directories for building packages.

Get the SRPM (*.src.rpm) of asunder-2.0. Two ways to do that:
1) yumdownloader --source asunder <== yumdownloader is part of the yum-utils package
2) download it from koji
In your case, grab the asunder-2.0-2.fc15.src.rpm package.

Use rpm to install the SRPM package, do so as regular user, NOT AS ROOT.

rpm -i Downloads/asunder-2.0-2.fc15.src.rpm

....assuming the package was in your ~/Downloads directory (change as necessary). Ignore warning messages about root.

That will put the asunder 2.0 source code tarball into ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
and the asunder 2.0 spec file into ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/

Delete the asunder 2.0 source code tarball in ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
"cp" or "mv" the asunder 2.1 source code tarball that you already have into ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/ (do not upack it).

"cd" into ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/

mousepad asunder.spec

Edit the line: Version: 2.0 to read Version: 2.1
Save and exit.

Let the package build begin:

rpmbuild -bb asunder.spec

Since you've already compiled the 2.1 source code, you should already have all the needed deps for the compile. If it goes well and it doesn't bail out on some fatal error, you should see something like this at the end:

---
---
Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /home/paulm/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT/asunder-2.1-1.fc12.i386
Wrote: /home/paulm/rpmbuild/RPMS/i686/asunder-2.1-1.fc12.i686.rpm
Wrote: /home/paulm/rpmbuild/RPMS/i686/asunder-debuginfo-2.1-1.fc12.i686.rpm
Executing(%clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.iQuCBB
+ umask 022
+ cd /home/paulm/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ cd asunder-2.1
+ rm -fr /home/paulm/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT/asunder-2.1-1.fc12.i386
+ exit 0

If you get that "+ exit 0" at the end, you're good to go. Find your asunder rpms in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/arch/.
You can ditch the asunder-debuginfo package.