[Radiance-general] DEB and RPM Radiance 3R5 packages

[Francesco Anselmo]

Hi to all!

I finally managed to build two debian packages for Radiance
(1 for binaries + 1 for documentation) and I also converted
them to RPM packages with alien.

The binary packages also include glrad (special=ogl) and 3ds2mgf and
the binaries have been compiled on a Debian 3.0r1 woody
Linux distribution with gcc 2.95.4. 
This is not a static binary distribution
but I'm also planning to make it (in the next days).
I also think I'm going to make a pmap package, so that it can be very easy
to switch between the classic and the pmap radiance binaries.

According to the File System Hierarchy Standard the executables are
copied to /usr/bin, the library files are put inside /usr/share/radiance,
the man files are sent to /usr/share/man and all the documentation 
is saved inside /usr/share/radiance/doc.

The user still has to set the RAYPATH variable, but I'm studying how to
make it automatically through a shell script (next release).

Of course, since this is my very first attempt at making a package, there is
some problems.
The bigger one is this: 
  the "vim" package also has a "rview" executable:
  since the vim package is usually quite important, I decided not to have
  the radiance package conflicting with vim. So, on Debian based system, it is   
  necessary to install the package by issuing the following command:
  # dpkg -i --force-all radiance_3.5.0-1_i386.deb
  in order to overwrite the /usr/bin/rview executable (very bad, isn't it?).
  On different systems it may not be a problem, for instance on my
  linux Mandrake 9.0 box rview from the vim package is put inside /bin/,
  so no overwrite occurs and apparently everything goes smoothly,
  but the system will always execute the vim rview binary, unless
  somebody erases or rename it, or changes the PATH variable.

Could anybody give me some feedback about how to solve this problem
in the best way? I think I'm going to write a message on the debian developer 
mailing list too.

Could we ask to add Radiance to the main or contrib Debian distribution?

The packages are located here:

http://www.dream.unipa.it/dream/pub/dot/anselmo/radiance/packages/

I hope to get your comments/suggestions/infos/flames soon, and I also
hope to have done a useful job.

-- 
ing. Francesco Anselmo
anselmo@dream.unipa.it
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[ DREAM ] 
Dipartimento di Ricerche 
Energetiche e Ambientali
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Universit� di Palermo
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Viale delle Scienze
90128 Palermo - Italy
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Tel + 39 091 236 302
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