vrms-rpm

A clone of vrms ("virtual Richard M. Stallman") for RPM-based GNU/Linux distributions.

This program analyses the list of currently installed RPM packages and reports found non-free packages to stdout.

Why a clone instead of a fork?

Because my only experience with Perl (which the original vrms is written in) has been one semester of Operating Systems class, and that was a long time ago.

Also, seeing how much the resulting program differs from the original, it's quite possible that making a fork instead of starting fresh would only complicate matters. After all, removing code is hard.

Installing from a repository

Fedora users can install vrms-rpm from the official distro repository. RHEL/CentOS users can get the package from the Fedora EPEL repositories.

$ dnf install vrms-rpm

You can also grab the package from the copr repository suve/vrms-rpm.

Building it on your own: dependencies

• bash, since 'tis a shell script

• grep, for all that nifty pattern matching

• gettext, for handling multiple languages

• make, for simplifying the build & install process

Building

Right now you're probably wondering why the hell do you need to build a bash script. Well, basically we need to process the gettext translation files and set up data paths.

At this point you should've already decided where do you want to install the program. As stated before, some paths are set in the code during build, so if these don't match during build and install, the whole thing will probably fail spectacularly in runtime.

To build, use make with the build target. The PREFIX variable can be used for controlling the install-dir. The default is /usr/local.

$ make build [PREFIX=/usr/local]

Installing

To install, perform your usual make install.

$ [sudo] make install [PREFIX=/usr/local]

Remember that to install stuff inside /usr you will need root capabilities.

Getting rid of it

Should you decide to remove the program, the Makefile has got you covered.

$ [sudo] make remove [PREFIX=/usr/local]

Once again, remember that messing inside /usr requires extra privileges.

Licensing

This program is made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Contributing

1. Make a new branch for your changes.

2. When modifying program options, remember to update the --help section and the manpage.

3. Use British spelling, when appropriate.

4. By contributing, you agree for your work to be included under the terms of the program licence.