RPM 就是 RPM Package Manager，它是许多流行的Linux 发行版的软件包管理工具，，譬如 Red Hat/Fedora、SUSE、Mandriva 等。经过七个月的开发，RPM 最终在近日发布了稳定版本 5.0.0。此版本使 RPM 成为了一个完全跨平台及可重用的软件包管理工具。
根据 RPM 5.0.0 的发布公告描述，该版本获得了下列新特性：
RPM Press ReleaseThe final availability of RPM 5.0 was announced in the following official press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2008-01-05
RPM Package Manager (RPM) version 5.0.0 released.
— 2008-01-05 — After seven months of comprehensivedevelopment, the popular Unix software packaging tool RPM PackageManager (RPM) was released as stable version 5.0.0. The relaunch of theRPM project in spring 2007 and today’s following availability of RPM 5marks a major milestone for the previously rather Linux-centric RPM. RPMnow finally evolved into a fully cross-platform and reusable softwarepackaging tool.
WHAT IS NEW IN RPM 5.0.0
The Automake/Autoconf/Libtool-based build environment of RPM wascompletely revamped from scratch and as one major result mostly allthird-party libraries now can be linked externally and in a veryflexible way. Support for the ancient and obsolete “rpmrc” files wascompletely removed, as everything is now configured through RPM “macros”under run-time only.
The RPM code base was ported to all major platforms, including theBSD, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X Unix flavors and Windows/Cygwin.Additionally, the code base was heavily cleaned up and now can becompiled with all major C compiler suites, including GNU GCC, Sun Studioand Intel C/C++.
The RPM packages, in addition to the default Gzip and optional Bzip2compression, now support also LZMA compression. Additionally, initialsupport for the XML Archive (XAR) file format was added where theimplementation establishes a wrapper archive format for mapping thefour sections used in RPM format packages (Lead, Signature, Header andPayload) to files with the same name in a XAR format package. Finally,support for the old RPMv3 (LSB) package format was removed to cleanupand simplify the code base. RPM 5, with respect to RPM format packages,now supports RPMv4 format only.
Additional features for use in package specifications (.spec files)were added, including new standard and even custom tags, new standardsections, etc. Most notably, RPM is now able to automatically trackvendor distribution files with its new vcheck(1) based “%track” sectionand now can automatically download the vendor distribution files, too.
ABOUT RPM
RPM is a powerful and mature command-line driven package managementsystem capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, andupdating Unix software packages. Each software package consists ofan archive of files along with information about the package likeits version, a description, and the like. There is also a libraryAPI, permitting advanced developers to manage such transactions fromprogramming languages such as C, Perl or Python.
Traditionally, RPM is a core component of many Linux distributions,including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Novell SUSE LinuxEnterprise, openSUSE, CentOS, Mandriva Linux, and many others. ButRPM is also used for software packaging on many other Unix operatingsystems like FreeBSD, Sun OpenSolaris, IBM AIX and Apple Mac OS X bythe cross-platform Unix software distribution OpenPKG. Additionally,the RPM archive format is an official part of the Linux StandardBase (LSB). RPM is released as free software under the GNU LGPLdistribution license.
HISTORY OF RPM
RPM was originally written in 1997 by Erik Troan and Marc Ewing for usein the Red Hat Linux distribution. Later the development of RPM becamea classical free software community effort, now lead since many yearsby RPM’s primary developer Jeff Johnson. In spring 2007 the RPM projectwas relaunched by Jeff Johnson on a new infrastructure provided by theOpenPKG project and its Ralf S. Engelschall. With the RPM 5 milestone,RPM finally evolved into a fully portable and vendor-agnostic packagingtool, which especially is no longer tied to its historical Linux roots.
对 RPM 的编译环境进行了全面的修补，支持链接外部的第三方库。
RPM 代码库已移植到所有主流平台，包括 BSD、Linux、Solaris、Mac OS X、Windows/Cygwin。现在支持使用所有主流的 C 编译器套件编译，如 GNU GCC、Sun Studio、Intel C/C++ 等。
RPM 包支持 LZMA 压缩、XML Archive (XAR) 文件格式。
添加了包规范 (.spec 文件)。
RPM 5.0.0 的源代码可从这里获取。
当你能梦的时候就不要放弃梦
