For “fun”, I decided to try and build [rpm5][16] on top of Fink. The ostensible reason was that I wanted to extract a source from an SRPM. It would be pointless and would probably bork my system if I tried to use RPM and dpkg simultaneously. But mostly, I just wanted to see if it could be done.

After several hours, many of which involved banging my head upon my desk, I managed to get it to build. It has a ton of dependencies, and beecrypt doesn’t exist in Fink. In the process, I ended up updating a few outdated packages in Fink.

WARNING: These are extremely experimental and may very well destroy your file system. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

1. beecrypt 4.1.2 (crypto/finkinfo)

- [beecrypt.info][5] [5]: /files/crypto/finkinfo/beecrypt.info "beecrypt • fink info file"
- [beecrypt.patch][6] [6]: /files/crypto/finkinfo/beecrypt.patch "beecrypt • patch"

1. [sqlite3 3.5.6][7] (main/finkinfo/database) [7]: http://www.sqlite.org/ “C library that implements a self-contained, embeddable, zero-configuration SQL database engine”
   • [sqlite3.info][8] [8]: /files/main/finkinfo/database/sqlite3.info “sqlite3 • fink info file”
   • [sqlite3.patch][9] [9]: /files/main/finkinfo/database/sqlite3.patch “sqlite3 • patch”
2. [neon 0.28.0][10] (main/finkinfo/libs) [10]: http://www.webdav.org/neon/ “HTTP and WebDAV client library”
   • [neon28.info][11] [11]: /files/main/finkinfo/libs/neon28.info “neon28 • fink info file”
3. [libxml2 2.6.30][12] (main/finkinfo/libs) [12]: http://xmlsoft.org/ “XML C parser and toolkit”
   • [libxml2.info][13] [13]: /files/main/finkinfo/libs/libxml2.info “libxml2 • fink info file”
   • [libxml2.patch][14] [14]: /files/main/finkinfo/libs/libxml2.patch “libxml2 • patch”
4. [popt 1.13][16] (main/finkinfo/libs) [16]: http://rpm5.org/files/popt/ “C library for parsing command line parameters”
   • [popt.info][17] [17]: /files/main/finkinfo/libs/popt.info “popt • fink info file”
5. [db46 4.6.21][18] (crypto/finkinfo) [18]: http://www.oracle.com/database/berkeley-db/index.html “Oracle Berkeley DB”
   • [db46-aes.info][19] [19]: /files/crypto/finkinfo/db46-aes.info “db46-aes • fink info file”
6. [rpm 5.0.2][20] (main/finkinfo/util) [20]: http://rpm5.org “RPM Package Manager”
   • [rpm.info][21] [21]: /files/main/finkinfo/utils/rpm.info “rpm • fink info file”
   • [rpm.patch][22] [22]: /files/main/finkinfo/utils/rpm.patch “rpm • patch”

Counter to the recommendations of the RPM development team, I used the external version of the Berkeley Database in a futile attempt to circumvent the libtool bug that continues to plague even libtool 1.5.26, namely the inability to install to a staging directory without causing grief within the *.la files. I ended up replacing RPM’s ltmain.sh with the one from libtool 1.5.26 and adapting some of the patches supplied by the Debian libtool package. It looks like the Fink validator is now happy. And so far, I can at least run rpm --version without segfaulting. I have yet to see if I can do anything else with it.