Why are RPM's distro specific?

[Arthur Pemberton]

Michael A. Peters wrote:

> On 01/19/2005 05:42:24 PM, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>
>> Out of curiousity, I'd like to know why RPM's are, or at least some  
>> are, distro specific? That would be with the obvious exception of  
>> distro specific apps.
>
>
> It usually has to do with different config file locations - something  
> the LSB is working to resolve, or with different versions of shared  
> libraries - in which case often times, it is often just a matter  
> recompiling the src.rpm on the target distro.
>
The problem of different paths seems trivial. Why can't an RPM simply 
reference $CONF_FOLDER for example, and then let the machine on which 
the rpm is unpacked tell it that $CONF_FOLDER = '/etc' ?