[asterisk-dev] CentOS packaging

[Oron Peled]

On Tuesday 25 February 2014 15:04:12 Jared Smith wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Ben Langfeld <ben at langfeld.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > After a conversation with Rusty last week, I've become aware that for a
> > simple installation of asterisk (11) from the CentOS repositories at
> > http://packages.asterisk.org/centos/, the 'current' repo at
> > http://packages.digium.com/centos is required to satisfy the dependency
> > of the 'asterisk' package on 'asterisk-dahdi'.
> >
> 
> Yeah, it's rather unfortunate.  Frankly, though, I think the Asterisk
> packages from the EPEL repository (based on the Fedora packages) are a much
> better place to start.

 * DAHDI drivers aren't on Fedora for very simple reasons:
   - They are not part of upstream kernel.
   - Fedora policy has always been "upstream first" (which I completely agree with).

 * With DAHDI firmware it may vary:
   - Firmwares that are just loaded to the devices and allow redistribution
     may have a chance to be in Fedora (there are many such packages already).
   - But firmwares with restrictive distribution license are unlikely to be
     on any FOSS distribution repository.

> I'd love to help with getting better Asterisk packages available for
> RPM-based systems, and am willing to put some of my limited spare time
> into improving the situation.

Pushing DAHDI into upstream kernel would make it available in Fedora and
derived distributions (EPEL repos).

While this require non-trivial work, I think the major blocker to overcome
is the fear from being subjected to the upstream kernel release cycle
and loosing some control.

IMO, the benefits from such a step are much bigger than this risk... by far.

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron

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