[Kolab-devel] yet another way to build kolab

[Richard Bos]

Hello,

I'm new to this list, but I have been lurking on 'user' list.  Some of you may 
have seen 1 or 2 posts from me there.  Like others I had something to remark 
about the inflexibility of the kolab installation tools.  So, I started 
hacking to do something about it (and not only complaining about it).  
However, I just found out that kolab just obtained devtool which already 
improves the the build situation already.  I assume the latter as it would 
otherwise not be accepted :)

I'll never the less provide the result of my work, as it is available :)  
Note, however that the actual output is not tested (for openpkg the resulting 
code has been compared with the contents of the rpm 
kolab-20040217-2.0.0.ix86-suse9.0-zfos.rpm).  From this it is correct to 
conclude that fine tuning needs to be done.  However, the latter won't be 
necessary at all if 'devtool' does it all already ;)

I based my work on the autotools concept, widely known to you all I assume.  
The kolab-autoconf-test-200405*.tar.bz2 tarball that is available at: 
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/kolab can be easily installed on a 
openpkg/kolab system, by running the famous command sequence:
'./configure; make; make install'.  

The same tarball can be installed on Mandrake (more or less, I'm not sure if 
all variables or set correctly) by executing:
'./configure --sbindir=/usr/sbin --bindir=/usr/bin --enable-dist=mandrake'
make
make DESTDIR=blah install (I assume you don't want to have this one on your 
system ;)

The tarball has been been obtained by executing:
'./configure; make; make distcheck'

Rpms could be made of those (if the native spec file is available) using:
rpm -ta 'tarball' (after the make distcheck has been done).

Variables are set in 1 location (configure.ac) and from there on distributed 
to the rest of the files => e.g. the tarball, rpm, application, etc would all 
get their version information from configure.ac

As usual with the autotools binaries and other information is looked up from 
the system.  In my case I only look up the location for perl and bash.  
However, later on checks could be implemented to look up the apache version, 
-document root, -user,-group, etc.

I'm sorry to introduce 'yet another way to build kolab'.  I hope I won't be 
slapped in the face for it.  If it ain't the latter I'm curious to your 
opinion.

-- 
Richard Bos
Without a home the journey is endless