.src.rpm, .i386.rpm and .i686.rpm
 

Hi all

Well, I know that there exists three types of extensions for linux packages (the very famous ones)
.tar.gz
.tgz
.src.rpm
.i386.rpm (or .i686.rpm)

now what is the difference between the last two extensions? And why is the last one the largest always in size?
What is the meaning of a pre-compiled package?

hhegab

The meaning of pre-compiled package is that someone like you, me, etc. sat home and compiled lets say bind on his own P-100 (i386 architecture) machine from source, then that person uses packaging tools to wrap his work into one file, so depending on the architecture it was compiled in it gets .i386.rpm, .ppc.rpm (for Motorola chips - Power PC),etc, so here comes the advantage of compiling the packages from source, doing so you make sure the software is compiled for your processor with optimization you specifiy, etc, there are some software packages that are better be compiled from source, but usually pre-compiled packages are fine as long as the dependencies satisfied and what not.

Also note if you install a src.rpm, most of the argument of "compiling from source" will be moot, because what you get is minimally the tarball and the /spec file. If you have special requirements, for instance wrt optimization, you could easily tweak the spec file to set up your CFLAGS and configure options. I say "minimally" because if you look at a src.rpm package like for instance Bash-2x, you get 10+ patches as well, all applied in the right order, no fussing needed...