About cron files and rpmlint

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 11:43:53AM -0300, Sergio Belkin wrote:
> Hi, rpmlint complains about cron files, is that a bug?
> For example:
> tmpwatch.x86_64: E: executable-marked-as-config-file
> /etc/cron.daily/tmpwatch
> Executables must not be marked as config files because that may prevent
> upgrades from working correctly. If you need to be able to customize an
> executable, make it for example read a config file in /etc/sysconfig.

Without commenting on the general case, I think that in the specific case
the explanation applies. If one wants to add a new directory to the tmpwatch
list, thus modifying the file, and then we (oh for example) change the
location of /usr/sbin/tmpwatch, on update either the new directory will be
lost or else the whole thing will break (depending on whether the file is
noreplace).

That said, I believe the plan is to eventually get rid of the systemwide
tmpwatch -- see the comments on this bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=866693


-- 
Matthew Miller  ☁☁☁  Fedora Cloud Architect  ☁☁☁  <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>