Linux Release Packaging Process: A mission for Jordi Sayol Jordi Sayol is the man behind the automation of the BRL-CAD Linux release packaging process, which he recently finished. His work continues the one made previously by Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo in .dbm packages. This article is based in some questions I asked him and in an interview made to Jordi by Gala, a Google Code-in student. Jordi has been working in BRL-CAD since January 2011, with is advanced Linux experience as his only companion. By that time, he started colaborating on-line with other BRL-CAD team members. Within such a massive project, with lots of code lines, he decided to take as his responsability the building of binary packages for Linux systems, since he's not a programmer. In both interviews, he explains quite accurately the process of making those. Just run a script he made and voila! "In fact the building job is done by debhelper to create deb packages, and the rpmbuild command to create rpm packages. The scripts tries to ensures that all dependencies needed by these commands are available, copy Linux specific files, create configuration files, etc. before building the packages". The scripts are so well written, that "anyone can easily create their own deb/rpm packages as needed", since they "create deb/rpm packages for the host architecture where they are executed". This allows BRL-CAD to be distributed Debian-like and Fedora-like systems, which means a great variety of platforms where BRL-CAD will be able to work. Unfortunately, since Fedora and OpenSUSE don't share the same nomenclature, their rpm packages must be separate ones. What the scripts do is to handle all the pre-building proccess and then create the packages. The scripts can be found at the "sh" folder when you download the BRL-CAD sources. Since he is not a programmer (only an advanced Linux user), he won't develop other parts of the code, but I think all the BRL-CAD community can be grateful for what he has done. by John. John is a Google Code-In student living in Portugal. He's favourite language is Python although he's considering to widen his knowledge to C. Gala Taylor is a 2012 Google Code-In participant. Although she has used various Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) products over the years, and has contributed example files and tutorials to several projects, this is the first time she has actively participated in the development of FOSS code. Gala is currently in 9th grade, and her favorite computer language is Java.