Upstream support for packaging efforts

Hi,

my goal is to eventually package FairMQ for the official Fedora RPM archives. Because DDS is an important dependency and I would like to package the FairMQ functionality that relies on DDS, too, I am going to package DDS as well. In this issue I would like to draw your attention and discuss with you a couple of points that when addressed upstream, would be greatly beneficial to the packaging process (also Spack, not only RPM).

The Fedora packaging policies foresee for new packagers, as I am, to first develop new packages on their community infrastructure, and once they reach a certain quality and comply with all the policies, one is supposed to submit them to the official review channels. I have started now the first step:

Git repo for dds RPM package sources: https://pagure.io/dds COPR RPM repo which contains dds x86_64 packages for use: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dklein/FairMQ

Open points:

Missing FHS compliance - see #277 - current workaround: configurable_libdir.patch, fix_install_destinations.patch, TODO plugins should be installed to libexec
Requirement to source DDS_env.sh - see #224 - it would be nice for DDS to work without this script if installed into a system prefix
Built-in dynamic wn_bin tarball distribution My vision here is to be able to provide two DDS packages, one for commander nodes and one for agent nodes (commander pkg may depend on agent pkg). At the moment, DDS solves the latter case with its own built-in and dynamic wn_bin tarball distribution. In order to provide a native agent package via an RPM, I would like to request a CMake build flag that basically disables all the DDS built-in wn_bin tarball creation and dynamic distribution.

Your comment is very much appreciated on

if there is interest from your side to address any of the above packaging hurdles on the upstream project level at all
and if yes, to which degree.

I am also willing to help with any potential workload, if I can. Thanks!

FairRootGroup / DDS

Upstream support for packaging efforts #304