[R-sig-Fedora] installing RKWard on RHEL

[Marc Schwartz]

That is correct, albeit there may very well be exceptions. RPMs and  
binary packages on Red Hat based distros are one and the same. The RPM  
package is the default means by which software is installed on RH  
based distros, in the same way as .debs are used for Debian based  
distros (eg. Ubuntu) or DMG/PKGs are used on OSX. See:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPM_Package_Manager

The key difference is the more rapid development path for Fedora,  
given it's "raison d'etre" to be a bleeding edge platform for desktop  
Linux. The rapid development cycle translates into short post release  
timelines and frequent upgrades.

Thus, the versions of applications, kernels and the underlying  
libraries on Fedora are going to be much more recent than RHEL. RHEL  
(like it's cousin CentOS) is designed to be a stable server platform  
with multi-year post-release support. Stability and up time are the  
priorities at the expense of bleeding edge technology, given the  
nature of servers and the desire for reliability.

RHEL 4 (2005) is roughly equivalent to Fedora 3 and RHEL 5 (2007) is  
roughly equivalent to Fedora 6. So you can get a feel for where they  
are relative to Fedora 11 and 12, which are the currently supported  
versions.

With RPMs, there will be dependencies on certain versions of other  
libraries and those dependencies may be incompatible across the  
distributions. The mixing and matching of RPMs across distros, or even  
different versions of the same distro, is typically a rapid path to  
the netherworld colloquially known as "RPM Hell" and the need for  
significant amounts of 18 year old single malt Scotch...although yum  
and similar intelligent package management tools have aided greatly in  
reducing that path by better controlling for dependencies.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

On Dec 23, 2009, at 4:41 PM, Christos Hatzis wrote:

> Thank you Marc.
>
> To be clear for future reference, binaries packaged for Fedora  
> distro's
> are not to be installed on RHEL and vice versa.  Same holds for rpm's?
>
> Thanks.
> -Christos
>
> On Wed, 2009-12-23 at 16:31 -0600, Marc Schwartz wrote:
>> On Dec 23, 2009, at 4:09 PM, Christos Hatzis wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I am trying to install RKWard to an RHEL workstation.  I tried
>>>
>>> $ yum install rkward
>>>
>>> but that did not work as it could not find the package in the  
>>> standard
>>> repositories.  The RKWard project page suggests that
>>>
>>> You can also find the build (of all versions of RKWard) at koji and
>>> other information regarding the package at pkgdb
>>>
>>> Is there a way to install the package on RHEL or the above resources
>>> are
>>> only built for Fedora?
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>> -Christos
>>
>>
>> Christos,
>>
>> The EPEL is the yum based repo for RHEL and more info is here:
>>
>>   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
>>
>> That being said, I did not see the package listed in Bodhi for RHEL,
>> only for FC11 and FC12, which are the currently supported versions of
>> Fedora. F10 went EOL in the past week.
>>
>> The Bodhi link is here:
>>
>>   https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/search/rkward
>>
>> The same for Koji:
>>
>>   http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=4881
>>
>> The RKWard site does not list pre-built binaries being available for
>> RHEL, only Fedora within the domain of RH distros:
>>
>>   http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/rkward/index.php?title=Binaries_and_Build_Scripts
>>
>> Thus, you will likely have to install from source for the time being.
>> Information on that path is here:
>>
>>   http://rkward.sourceforge.net/
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> Marc Schwartz
>>
>>
> -- 
> Christos Hatzis, Ph.D.
> Nuvera Biosciences
> Woburn, MA 01801
>