[Fedora-packaging] [Proposal] Packaging guidelines/spec per version

[Vít Ondruch]

Dne 13.3.2013 16:35, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski napsal(a):
> On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 at 16:12, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 13 March 2013 at 13:12, Vít Ondruch wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Wouldn't it be possible to have packaging guidelines versioned by
>>> Fedora version? If this would be accompanied by the rule, that .spec
>>> files can't be shared as well (using some conditions), this would
>>> allow us to have much faster evolution of our packaging. I'll give
>>> you a few examples.
>> +1 on versioning guidelines per Fedora version
>> -1 on prohibiting spec file sharing across branches
> To expand on my -1, your rationale does not explain why we should
> ban people from conditionalizing certain parts of their spec files
> to follow guidelines for any Fedora and EPEL version they wish
> to maintain their packages for. Yes, it adds to maintenance overhead,
> but the reduced overhead due to having one spec file instead of
> up to 6[1] balances that. And people are free to use separate, differing
> specs for each branch already.

The main reason is that we cannot get rid of legacy stuff from .spec 
files and start to use new features. The other reason is that it is not 
possible to reliably script the update process. For example, if you have 
rubygem and you build it for EPEL and Fedora, you had something like:

%if 0%{fedora} > 0
%global rubyabi 1.9.1
%else
%global rubyabi 1.8
%endif

Now we move from %{rubyabi} to ruby(release) and you cannot certainly 
know that there was such conditionalized definition. So you have to 
check the .spec manually. You even don't know if that conditions still 
make sense, if they are in use. They could be even named differently.

That speaks all against sharing.


Vít