Packaging Hobbit (network monitor) - anyone interested in helping out?

[Roland Wolters]

Hi list,

currently I am trying to package hobbit (client + server) for EPEL and Fedora. 
I have to do that anyway, but it would be nice to have high quality packages 
upstream in the EPEL/Fedora repositories.

However, I'm only used to "light" packages where configure,make,make install is 
sufficient. Hobbit, in contrast, is a real beast, and needs quite some deep 
knowledge in init scripting and other stuff.

I started with the upstream provided RPMs and the ones I found at 
razorsedge.org and tried to come up with something. Currently I have packages 
which at least work - but which are pretty ugly, use quite some dark magic and 
are not at all compliant to rpmlint, Fedora's principles or even good taste.

So, is there anyone who wants to help out with the packages? I would agree to 
be the maintainer of the packages once they are in the repositories. 
Additionally, the Debian package maintainer already agreed to help with the 
packaging and together we would try to ask upstream for adjustments, fixes and 
other stuff to make life easier for packagers (and maybe admins/users) in the 
mid term.

The current version is here:
www.credativ.com/~rwo/hobbit-4.2.0-1.src.rpm
DON'T use that in production yet!

What is still missing:
- Making the init files pretty:
Currently the init files launch another script whcih behaves like just a nother 
init file. That can be made easier I think. Also/Maybe du to that, the init 
files do not properly react to start/stop in case of problems, and not all 
processes are shut down properly.

- pid files:
Currently pid files lie in /var/log/hobbit/, but should at least be in 
/var/run/hobbit. Due to the shell magic already done by upstream this might be 
more difficult than it sounds now.

- Licences:
The package seems to be GPL2, but some files are BSD and PD, this need to be 
addresed in the spec file.

- Installation:
Right now  the server requires the client due to some files included with teh 
client package. However, server and client must not run together, so the 
question is if this should be checked at runtime (current solution) or with 
package excludes (like razorsedge.org does, for example).

- General Cleaning:
As mentioned above, there is much too much dark magic in all the files around 
Hobbit, so it will be necessary in the long term to clean all the shell 
scripts to make them at least Fedora/EPEL compliant, or, even better, 
distribution agnostic.

- Upstream:
There is already a set of patches included since upstream still hasn't 
released a new version. Also, quite some shell magic really hurts the 
packagers (Debian as well as "us"), so it might be helpfull to talk to 
upstream together.

So, as I said, the package is ugly, and this task is for people who need a 
challenge. However, Hobbit is quite a nice program and it is worth it.

Best regards,

Roland
-- 
Roland Wolters
Tel.: +49 (0)21 61 / 46 43-181
pgp fingerprint: D2DE 4612 9C7D 7B7A 420D 84A8 E900 29F9 C16C 2283

credativ GmbH, HRB Mönchengladbach 12080 
Hohenzollernstr. 133, 41061 Mönchengladbach 
Geschäftsführung: Dr. Michael Meskes, Jörg Folz
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