Yet another attempt to abstract things that cannot be abstracted. Works as long as your "package" is a blob of files. Doesn't seem to understand anything else. Some package management systems allow dependencies (on other packages, on files, or on abstracted "capabilities") that are inherently system-dependent.
All this provides vs. using plain tarballs (or even "make install") is the ability to back out and upgrade your custom packages using your system's package management command.
It turns out, that's exactly what I want in the world of a configuration management system like Puppet or Chef.
I don't want my package to try to be clever and configure itself or make lots of assumptions about how I intend to use it. I'll manage that myself through other means.
Some standardization in terms of configuration is OK, but you're totally right that you don't want a bunch of "clever" configuration done by a RPM or OS level package. I haven't come across many "clever" RPMs in my time though. :) Mostly I think OS packagers are doing a good job.
Don't forget that if it's a RPM that comes out of the process you can gpg sign it, and verify the files that it provided when your server gets hacked. Sure, yeah, you can do that with a tar file, but it's pretty easy to run one command on a server and see what's changed.
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Yet another attempt to abstract things that cannot be abstracted. Works as long as your "package" is a blob of files. Doesn't seem to understand anything else. Some package management systems allow dependencies (on other packages, on files, or on abstracted "capabilities") that are inherently system-dependent.
All this provides vs. using plain tarballs (or even "make install") is the ability to back out and upgrade your custom packages using your system's package management command.
It turns out, that's exactly what I want in the world of a configuration management system like Puppet or Chef.
I don't want my package to try to be clever and configure itself or make lots of assumptions about how I intend to use it. I'll manage that myself through other means.
Some standardization in terms of configuration is OK, but you're totally right that you don't want a bunch of "clever" configuration done by a RPM or OS level package. I haven't come across many "clever" RPMs in my time though. :) Mostly I think OS packagers are doing a good job.
Don't forget that if it's a RPM that comes out of the process you can gpg sign it, and verify the files that it provided when your server gets hacked. Sure, yeah, you can do that with a tar file, but it's pretty easy to run one command on a server and see what's changed.