Documentation

docs/building_universal_deb_and_rpm_packages.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# Building Universal .deb and .rpm Packages
+This document describes how to build packages that will be usable on a wide
+variety of .rpm and .deb based Linux distros.
+
+# How it is Done Currently
+The SPEC and control files are already adequately flexible to work across the
+major derivatives of Fedora, Debian and OpenSUSE.  The key to building a
+single package that will work across all variants is to compile on a
+sufficiently old distro with an older GCC and glibc.
+
+Newer GCC tends to be loaded with bugs (and frankly, performance has not
+increased in a meaningful way in years), and binaries compiled against glibc
+are forward-compatible with newer glibc but not backwards compatible with older
+glibc.  So building on an older distro is pure win, unless you are just a
+software enthusiast who does not care about stability or portability and just
+wants the rush of compiling against the bleeding edge.
+
+At the moment, Debian 10 is an excellent choice, and should be for years,
+perhaps until 2024 or so, at which point we may start building against
+Debian 11.  Note that Debian can also build RPMs by installing the `rpm`
+package.
+