Eric's Ogg Vorbis RPMs

Skip the talk and get to the files

From this page you can download RPM packages of Ogg Vorbis libraries and tools that will install easily on Red Hat Linux systems, version 7.2 and 7.3. There are a few dependency issues that can make the official vorbis.com RPMs difficult to install cleanly. (Cleanly: resolving all dependencies without resorting to --force or unnecessary use of other distributions' packages via rpmfind.net).

So, here's the process: grab these files and install them all at once, using the rpm upgrade (-U) command. You should then have version 1.0 of the vorbis tools and libraries, as well as rc3 version libraries for existing applications that are already linked against them. You can skip the -devel RPMs if you won't need to compile software that uses Ogg Vorbis.

Binary RPMS built for Red Hat 7.2
Binary RPMS built for Red Hat 7.3
SRPMS that I modified
vorbis.com original RPMS

The 7.2 and 7.3 RPMS differ in only two respects:

• They were compiled there, 7.2 on 7.2 and 7.3 on 7.3. This may have introduced subtle differences or incompatibilities that I haven't noticed.
• The 7.2 vorbis-tools RPM is linked against the version of libcurl that is supplied with Red Hat 7.2. This is different than the one in 7.3. This is the same source package (unmodified from vorbis.com), just recompiled on a 7.2 system.

My packaging job could definitely be improved upon, and the folks that originally wrote the RPM spec files will undoubtedly find lapses in judgement and sanity in the ways that I modified them. Such mistakes are not intended to judge previous work, and are just results of my first hamfisted attempts to install vorbis with a little less work needed by the installer (the installer person, not the installer program).

NOTES:

• If you upgrade Red Hat's vorbis packages using rpm -U, you will likely see a message that says:

  package vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-3 (which is newer than vorbis-tools-1.0-1) is
  already installed

  RPM is incorrectly evaluating the version numbers. The proper fix would be to change the "epoch" variable in the RPM spec file, but I've chosen not to do this because then my RPMs would always appear newer than official vorbis RPMs. The easiest fix for this is to uninstall (rpm -e) the old packages first or tell rpm that older packages are OK (rpm -U --oldpackage).
• It has been pointed out to me several times that the libao RPMs from vorbis.com can be safely installed and used on Red Hat systems, but the binary package will not install without ALSA libraries or the rpm parameter --force. The source RPMs, likewise, cannot be rebuilt without the ALSA development files present. The libao packages I have built will install and rebuild without these files (which are not supplied by Red Hat), and so I am somewhat reluctantly accepting the loss of ALSA support (not needed on Red Hat machines anyway) in exchange for packages that install and rebuild more gracefully.
• I have no proof that my use of libvorbis-compat along with a newer libvorbis is compatible with all applications. I have tested the KDE player "noatun" and XMMS, and both work for me.
• You can read about the changes I made here.

Enjoy. Comments Welcome. Eric <e d s@ reric·net>