Generate RPM packages

[HebaruSan]

Motivation

We generate .deb files as of #2187, but users of Linux distributions that aren't Debian-derived have to use the plain ckan.exe file. This means they miss out on:

• Having ckan in the system $PATH
• Having a ckan icon in the system app menus
• An out of date man page
• Falling back to ConsoleUI if $DISPLAY isn't defined

Some users may even assume that the lack of an .rpm file means they can't use CKAN, even though they can.

Changes

Now we also generate .rpm files, so Fedora users can enjoy the above benefits. This is done with a simple Makefile and a .spec file, sharing a few files with the .deb package. The build system is updated to include the .rpm file as a release asset.

To try it via the command line:

./build rpm

Fixes #2748.

[HebaruSan]

@enderger, could you please try this test build and report any problems you have with it? I don't have an RPM-based distro available for testing.

• (link removed)

[enderger]

I will do so at home. It may take awhile, given the upcoming potential flooding.

[enderger]

YAST claims that the package is unsigned.

[HebaruSan]

Can you bypass that? It's definitely unsigned, since I just compiled it for this test.

[enderger]

No other issues occur during install. YAST sees the dependences and I told the package manager to ignore the "error".

[enderger]

The thing loads, but seems to think that the run uses Windows 95.

[enderger]

[enderger]

Test launch works

[HebaruSan]

Yup, that's what WinForms apps look like. Thanks for checking it out!
Mind opening a terminal and confirming that "man ckan" prints the man page?

[enderger]

Man page works:

[enderger]

[enderger]

That field's label is incomplete

[HebaruSan]

Can you show us? Maybe there's a font difference that's affecting the alignment:

[enderger]

That's the entire text string

[HebaruSan]

OK, but we can't fix it if we can't see the problem :)

[enderger]

[HebaruSan]

Huh; all of your labels are being truncated by one word. That's weird, because they all have AutoSize set to true, so they should all be sizing to fit the text.

[enderger]

This is happening on KDE, I'll try with a DEB install in a VM

[HebaruSan]

Out of curiosity, which version of Mono are you running (mono --version)? If it happens to be an old one, maybe this was a bug that got fixed at some point.

[DasSkelett]

This is happening on KDE, I'll try with a DEB install in a VM

I'm using KDE too, and it's working for me. (Not installed with the rpm, but I don't think that's the cause.)

[enderger]

The one listed in the DEB. It was autoinstalled with CKAN

[HebaruSan]

The .deb and .rpm packages don't specify a precise version for the mono dependency; which one is installed on your system?

[enderger]

5.10.1.47

[DasSkelett]

Okay this is weird.

user@localhost CKAN]$ sudo rpm -i *.rpm
Error: Failed dependencies:
	mono(system) = 2.0.0.0 is required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch
	mono(System.Transactions) = 2.0.0.0 required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch
	mono(mscorlib) = 2.0.0.0 is required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch

So the only change is that mono is no longer on that list.
Querying the dependencies of the rpm file returns this (arrows added by me):

[user@localhost CKAN]$ sudo rpm -qp --requires *.rpm
/bin/sh
mono(Microsoft.CSharp) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System) = 2.0.0.0                <---------
mono(System) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Configuration) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Core) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Data) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Drawing) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Numerics) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Runtime.Serialization) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Transactions) = 2.0.0.0    <---------
mono(System.Transactions) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Web) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Windows.Forms) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Xml) = 4.0.0.0
mono(System.Xml.Linq) = 4.0.0.0
mono(mscorlib) = 2.0.0.0               <---------
mono(mscorlib) = 4.0.0.0
mono-complete
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(FileDigests) <= 4.6.0-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1

So it is asking two times for those three libraries, one time an older version.
I can't read anything like this out of rpm/ckan.spec...

[HebaruSan]

OK, I set up a Fedora guest under VirtualBox. Any idea how to make it mount the shared folder I configured so I can access the generated RPM file? Host:

Guest:

[osboxes@localhost log]$ lsmod|grep vbox
vboxguest              45056  4
vboxvideo              40960  2
drm_kms_helper        212992  1 vboxvideo
ttm                   114688  1 vboxvideo
drm                   491520  5 drm_kms_helper,vboxvideo,ttm
[osboxes@localhost log]$ ls /ckan
[osboxes@localhost log]$ mount|grep ckan
[osboxes@localhost log]$ sudo mount -t vboxsf CKAN /ckan
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device
[osboxes@localhost log]$ sudo mount -t vboxsf ckan /ckan
/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: No such device

[DasSkelett]

OK, I set up a Fedora guest under VirtualBox. Any idea how to make it mount the shared folder I configured so I can access the generated RPM file?

I have no idea. I tried everything you mentioned too, and the folder is always created, but it's empty.
Neither does copy-pasting files work, only text.
VB guest additions seem to be installed, and clipboard/drag-and-drop are set to bidirectional, but nothing of that works.

I ended up using the file transfer tool of VirtualBox (under Machine > File Manager or something like that).

[HebaruSan]

The file manager's Create Session button does nothing for me, not even an error message. :(

[DasSkelett]

The file manager's Create Session button does nothing for me, not even an error message. :(

With your guest system credentials entered? Hmm...
Guest additions are installed? (Should be by default with the normal Fesora Workstation edition)

[HebaruSan]

OK, I may have broken it by installing from my VirtualBox's ISO. /var/log/vboxadd-setup.log says:

VBoxClient: error while loading shared libraries: libcrypt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

... and presumably the built-in version would be linked correctly.

Hmm, no. It's the Fedora package; no change after uninstall and reinstall.

[HebaruSan]

Ah! I had the username wrong! It's "osboxes", but it's displayed as "osboxes.org" in most places so I was trying that. File manager working now.

[HebaruSan]

user@localhost CKAN]$ sudo rpm -i *.rpm
Error: Failed dependencies:
	mono(system) = 2.0.0.0 is required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch
	mono(System.Transactions) = 2.0.0.0 required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch
	mono(mscorlib) = 2.0.0.0 is required by ckan-1.26.3-1.noarch

I believe those are "automatic dependencies":

https://rpm.org/user_doc/more_dependencies.html

Automatic Dependencies

To reduce the amount of work required by the package builder, RPM scans the file list of a package when it is being built. Any files in the file list which require shared libraries to work (as determined by ldd) cause that package to require the shared library.

So rpmbuild is scanning a Debian system for things it might need on Fedora and confusing the heck out of itself in the process. I've just pushed a commit that hopefully turns that off (and depends on mono-core instead, since I think we're not supposed to depend on mono-complete just like on Debian). You might need to run ./build rpm-clean to make sure these changes are applied. I can now install the CKAN RPM, but I get certificate errors running it, so I'm going to see whether the old solutions to that help...

[HebaruSan]

Added a post-install script to sync the certs, since that fixed the errors I was seeing.

[DasSkelett]

Yep, I can give a go for the rpm on Fedora.
Now installs fine even without preinstalled mono via the Software application and/or yum.
The rpm command can't install dependencies for you, but a clear needs mono-core >= 5.0 is returned, so everybody using that should now what to do.

[enderger]

If issues persist, maybe opensuse may have better luck(Tumbleweed seems up to date)

[HebaruSan]

The issues are fixed on Fedora now, but testing on openSUSE as well is a good idea, downloading VM now...

[HebaruSan]

@enderger, your display issues are caused by font hinting.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/445063/2422988

I saw the same problem initially on my openSUSE VM. I installed Fontweak and unchecked this checkbox:

And now it works as expected:

[HebaruSan]

It seems that changing the hint style to full works as well:

The default for me was a hint style of 'none' with the checkbox enabled. I suspect that Mono auto sizes its labels based on the hinting checkbox, but when it renders them the hint style 'none' makes the font larger than expected.

[enderger]

Just made a bug report

[HebaruSan]

So @enderger have you confirmed that changing the setting to hintfull fixes it for you?

I already have a copy of the mono source, so I might look into submitting a fix for this...

[enderger]

I had to change to a different linux distro after my wifi driver went kaput

[enderger]

The labels work on the new install, though

[HebaruSan]

@enderger So what distro are you using now? Still RPM-based? Are you installing via the RPM?

[enderger]

I went with mint, as it works with my wifi card more easily than rpm distros. I can’t move off until the card driver gets better

[Olympic1]

@enderger Have you had some time to test this?

[HebaruSan]

@Olympic1, I think he switched to a non-RPM distro (Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu is based on Debian), so he can't test this anymore. It looked good on my Fedora and openSUSE VMs though.

[DasSkelett]

I'm approving this now. I didn't test it on OpenSUSE, but we should be okay. If it doesn't work on real machines as opposed to VMs for whatever reason, it's no big issue, nothing relies on it, there are the old ways of installing until we fix it.