Re: /usr/share/applications weird error on koji

[Alec Leamas]

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 
>  <mailto:[e-mail]>> 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
> >     <https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/search/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 <http://autoverse.net>
> >
> >
> >
>      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?