Linux Packaging News

[Ivan R. Judson]

The AG Dev Team would like to thank all those who have provided input on the
direction the linux packaging should take, and would like to encourage more
activity like
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/web-mail-archive/lists/ag-tech/2004/04/msg00111.
html in response to our requests for information.

Our plans for linux packaging are broadly to supply base distribution
materials, and a small number of end-user distributions. Additionally, work
with others to take the base distribution materials and create other
distributions, using our cvs, bugzilla, testing tools and mailing lists to
coordinate the effort.

As of 2.2 (the coming release) we plan to provide:

1) Windows Installers
2) tarball packaging
3) a basic RPM (dist, version independent)
4) Fedora RPMSs*
5) RH7.3 RPMs (This is the last release we'll support RH7.3)
6) Slackware Packages*

* These have been to date, unsupported by the AG Team at ANL, but as of this
release we'd like to work with the developers doing the packaging to
integrate this work into our standard development process. We can use the
existing cvs, bugzilla, mailing lists and the testing framework in
development.

For the 2.3 release we would like to provide:

1) Windows Installers
2) tarball packaging
3) A basic RPM (dist,version independent)
4) A basic debian package
5) Fedora RPMs
6) Slackware Packages

If you are interested in supporting any particular platform (or already are)
please send email to mailto:ag-mcs at mcs.anl.gov with your contact
information, platform interest, and any other pertinent information that
might be helpful.

--Ivan