Hi, are there any generic packaging "style" guidelines for SUSE Linux packages? More precisely, I have the following questions: - Is %buildroot preferred over $RPM_BUILD_ROOT? I'm asking because I see more and more packages switching from $RPM_BUILD_ROOT to %buildroot, but this macro is an implementation detail according to Red Hat's rpm-list: http://www.redhat.com/archives/rpm-list/2002-July/msg00121.html The environment variable is the documented thing. The same is the case with %optflags vs. $RPM_OPT_FLAGS IIRC. - Is %configure preferred over ./configure? IIRC until recently, no package in the distro used it and everything worked well without it. I'm asking that because %configure IMHO sucks terribly. It sets questionable values for --libexecdir, --localstatedir and --sharedstatedir for packages whose prefix is /usr, requires even more macros to be redefined for packages whose prefix is not /usr (/opt/kde3, /opt/gnome and /usr/X11R6 come to mind) and always sets --libdir to %{_prefix}/%{_lib} although it must remain %{_prefix}/lib for some packages. So what's the exact benefit of %configure? It makes some autoconf calls shorter by adding the right options and others longer by adding wrong ones, which have to be corrected manually, so we end up adding options manually in either case. - %optflags / $RPM_OPT_FLAGS again: Are they "nice to have" things or is not using them a bug that should be reported? - run-time and -devel packages Is there a general rule for splitting or not splitting library packages into run-time and -devel subpackages? Is this decided according to the size of a library, the number of header files, other criteria? I'm asking that because IMHO always splitting them is an interesting approach even for tiny packages as it allows third party people to package another version of the same library that has a different SONAME without having to worry about conflicts. The -devel packages would still be clashing in most of such cases, but the run-time packages can be installed in parallel. Andreas Hanke -- Mobile Internet - E-Mail und Internet immer und �berall! GMX zum Mitnehmen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/pocketweb