trouble installing rpm-4.0.4.tar.gz

[Malcolm Kay]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:11, Frederick Thomas wrote:
> shalom,
>       I have a question which I hope that you can help me with. I just
> tried to intstall rpm-4.0.4.tar.gz on my system[freebsd 4.8] and have not
> been able to get it to ./configure let alone make. Is there a special dir,
> ( /usr/compat/linux?), or dependencies that are required to compile the
> tarball? My main reason for trying top install a package manager is that
> I've had problems with gmetadom[lastest] and various other tarballs with
> limited success. I am attempting to teach myself about unix and could just
> use a pointer in the right direction. Thank you for your time...
>

I think you may be confused about RPMs, FreeBSD packages and ports.

RPMs are a species of package used with some Linux distributions. The 
actual package has a .rpm suffix and (normally) requires the Linux utility
'rpm' for creation, installation and management.

FreeBSD packages have ann suffix of the form .tgz and are instaelled, and 
managed with a number of utilities installed by default with the FBSD 
installation. These are pkg_add, pkg_delete, and generally pkg_*. These 
contain precompiled binaries and support files.

Ports in the FreeBSD system are essentually a set of Makefile driven
algorithms for compiling utilities and applications from source; and 
installing the resultant binaries and support files in the (mostly) correct 
place in the system file hierarchy. Often the the algorithms first patch the 
source to make it better suited to the operating system or to fix bugs in the
original. The source distributions may be in many different formats, but
archives with the suffix .tar.gz are quite common.

(Both ports and packages get registered in /var/db/pkg which assists in
clean deletion of utilities and applictions)

I believe this means that installing rpm is not useful in achieving your 
ultimate goal. I would guess gmetadom-0.2.1.tar.gz is the latest distribution
you are refering to. Doing it the hard way you take this file and explode it 
with:
# tar zxf gmetadom-0.2.1.tar.gz
and read and try to digest the instructions that are likely to be contained
for compiling and installing the software. This is the generic approach -- 
hopefully it works on any unix like system.

The better way is to download the latest port algorithm from www.freebsd.org,
install it in /usr/ports/textproc, and then 
# cd /usr/ports/textproc/gmetacom
# make install
But you might first have a look to see if you have gmetacom in your ports
(/usr/ports/textproc/gmetacom) and if so check the version which you can find
in /usr/ports/textproc/gmetacom/Makefile. If this is the version you are looking for
then you don't need to install the port algorithm; just go ahead with the 
'make install'.

And assuming you have an internet connection it might all happen.

Malcolm Kay