Paul's Blog Entries for March 2008

Monday 3rd March 2008

Local Packages

Tuesday 4th March 2008

Local Packages

I'm also working on some updated php-gtk packages, since the long-awaited version 2.0 release supporting PHP5 and GTK2 finally made it out last weekend. It requires PHP >= 5.1.2 but I found that it wouldn't build on anything older than Fedora 7 (including RHEL 5). This turned out to be because the ZEND_MN macro is used, and that only appeared in later versions of PHP. This patch fixed the build: 

$ cat php-gtk-2.0.0-oldphp.patch
--- php-gtk-2.0.0/main/php_gtk.h        2008-02-29 19:05:53.000000000 +0000
+++ php-gtk-2.0.0/main/php_gtk.h        2008-03-04 11:08:30.000000000 +0000
@@ -60,6 +60,11 @@
 #include "zend_exceptions.h"
 #include "zend_extensions.h"
 
+/* for older php versions */
+#ifndef ZEND_MN
+#define ZEND_MN ZEND_FN
+#endif
+
 #define PHP_GTK_VERSION "2.0.0-dev"
 
 #ifdef PHP_WIN32

I've yet to try running pptpconfig with the new php-gtk; I'll leave that for another day.

Wednesday 5th March 2008

Local Packages

Friday 7th March 2008

Local Packages

Sunday 9th March 2008

Allotment

Planted the early potatoes: 31 Pentland Javelin in three rows at the Harboro Road end, and 21 Arran Pilot in two rows at the Glebelands Road end.

Monday 10th March 2008

Local Packages

From Fedora 9, python packages include an egg-info file that is installed directly under %{python_sitelib} or %{python_sitearch} for architecture-independent and architecture-specific packages respectively. This can present a problem when trying to maintain a single spec file that can be used to build a package for multiple target distribution releases. The approach taken in the official Fedora package for python-twisted-core is to use a distribution-based conditional in the %files list: 

%files
...
%if 0%{?fedora} >= 9
  %{python_sitearch}/Twisted-%{version}-py2.5.egg-info
%endif

I'm not keen on this approach because it requires the presence of the %{fedora} macro to build successfully on Fedora 9 onwards (not a bad assumption really since it is defined from a file included in the fedora-release package, which everyone will have), but more importantly it will require a further edit to support different distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 when that appears. My preferred approach is to test directly for the actual significant differences between releases that affect a package, and handle things according to the results of this testing. This leads to a more portable source package. My approach to the egg-info issue in python-twisted-core is to check to see if an egg-info file has been generated, and include it in the %files list if present: 

%install
...
# See if there's an egg-info file
if [ -f %{buildroot}%{python_sitearch}/Twisted-*.egg-info ]; then
        echo %{buildroot}%{python_sitearch}/Twisted-*.egg-info |
                sed -e 's|^%{buildroot}||'
fi > egg-file

%files -f egg-file

Tuesday 11th March 2008

Local Packages

Fedora Project

Monday 17th March 2008

Local Packages

Tuesday 18th March 2008

Local Packages

Wednesday 19th March 2008

Fedora Project

Thursday 20th March 2008

Surgery

Had an operation today at the Day Surgery Unit at Trafford General Hospital to remove two sebaceous cysts from my scalp. This was elective surgery; I've had the cysts since I was in my teens and they haven't really grown any more but the larger one at the front was starting to show through my thinning hair and so I decided in Autumn last year that it was time to have them done.

It seemed that everyone passing through the unit in the morning session reported there for 8am and the surgical team just went through everybody in some order that no doubt made sense to them. I was the penultimate patient of the morning, not getting changed into the operating gown until 11am and not going to theatre until 11:15. It was all over by 11:45.

On the whole it was actually quite an enjoyable and relaxing morning, where I was able to catch up on some reading whilst waiting, and to find out what it's like to have an operation (albeit very minor) for the first time after nearly 43 years of my life!

My thanks to the staff at the unit for a pleasant morning!

Tuesday 25th March 2008

Local Packages

Fedora Project

$ koji --weburl=http://ia64.koji.fedoraproject.org/koji --server=http://ia64.koji.fedoraproject.org/kojihub build --scratch --arch-override=ia64 dist-f9 'cvs://cvs.fedoraproject.org/cvs/pkgs?rpms/perl-Math-GMP/devel#perl-Math-GMP-2_04-9_fc9'

Thursday 27th March 2008

Local Packages

Friday 28th March 2008

Local Packages

Monday 31st March 2008

Fedora Project

Local Packages

Previous Month: February 2008
Next Month: April 2008