On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 09:51:30PM -0500, Zachary Uram wrote: > what exactly does a packaging expert do? They recommend modifications to an open source project so that it can be packaged using whatever packaging tool they are experts in. They first work out how the product is compiled, installed and run. Then they figure out how to adjust the sequence so that it fits the rules of the distribution they are packaging for. They usually come up with a directory containing files that help with the packaging, and may even make a few recommendations to the project team to simplify packaging of future versions. They then generate test packages, ask a few people to try them out, then final packages and submit them to their distribution authority. > u mean converting our vanilla src tree (or blessed binary w/ RSA > src) into a RPM and ftp'ing this to some redhat upload site? That's a fairly succinct description. ;-) While I would define an open source hacker as someone who contributes to open source projects at a software engineering level ... a packaging expert is a sort of proto-hacker or hacker-wannabe who seeks reward from the open source community based on their persistence in packaging. See http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html for how to become an open source hacker. -- James Cameron mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org http://quozl.netrek.org/