On 03/19/2012 02:32 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Alec Leamas <leamas.alec(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
> On 03/19/2012 12:50 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm trying to build a package. It's an update on
> > SparkleShare package. I build it locally with mock and
> > everything seems ok. Package is built successfully. But
> > when I try to build it on koji I get an error and build
> > fails on both f16 f17 targets:
> > "The databases in [/usr/share/applications] could not be
> > updated."
> > which I think has something to do with the
> > desktop-file-validate on %install phase
> >
> > See the relevant koji task and build log for more:
> >
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=3908835
> >
> > Any help appreciated
> >
> > --
> > Nikos Roussos
> >
> >
> >
> From the log, it looks like it fails in
> 'install-data-hook'. If so, the culprit might be some
> Makefile.am. Have upstream updated a Makefile.am to include
> 'desktop-file-install', failing when not making a "real"
> install int /usr?
>
> If this is right, you should be able to verify that the %
> install hasn't really begun when the error is triggered. If
> unsure, put some simple 'echo' statement in top of %install
> to verify that it hasn't been started.
>
> If this doesn't help, scanning the generated Makefiles for
> 'desktop-file-install' and/or '/usr/share/applications'
> might give a clue
>
>
> Actually there is an:
>
> install-data-hook:
> update-desktop-database $(datadir)/applications
>
> which seems to be the exact point that installation fails
>
>
>
>
You must patch that, it will try to update /usr/share/applications
when building the rpm which of course isn't acceptable.
For Fedora, you could just remove the target and run automake;
autoconf; ./configure, given that you run update-desktop-database as
part of %install.
However, this should really be resolved together with upstream. If
they want to keep the functionality, one could possibly:
- Move it from install-data-hook to a separate target such as
'install-desktop' and let users run this as part of installation into
system dirs.
- Only run update-desktop-database if $(datadir)/applications is
writeable:
Personally, I would prefer the first one. To mess
with /usr/share/applications when DESTDIR is set is not really the way
'make install' is supposed to work. And updating
$(DESTDIR)/$(datadir)/applications just doesn't make sense.
But I'm just a newbie, maybe someone else has a better piece of advice
here?
The usual way to make this selectable is with a parameter for the
package's configure script, something like --disable-desktop-update .
These days, it seems like very few packages need this any more. I don't
know if upstreams have just stopped doing update-desktop-database at
install time, or if they mostly somehow dynamically detect whether to do
this or not.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora