Re: rawhide report: 20060929 changes

[Horst H. von Brand]

Jesse Keating <jkeating(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Sunday 01 October 2006 20:12, Jon Nettleton wrote:
>  > I see the use of rm commands all the time in spec files.  Can anyone
>  > explain why this is used instead of the %exclude directive?  Not
>  > important, just curious because excluding files seems like a much safer
>  > and elegant solution. 
>  Lack of education?  Maybe the developer isn't aware of the
> %exclude, or
>  would rather just remove the files anyway.  I use rm to remove static
>  libraries rather than exclude them. 
What is sorely needed is a RPM reference... the "Maximum RPM" book is nice
as narrative, but almost useless at the time of designing a new .spec file
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: [phone]
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             [phone]
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile               Fax:  [phone]

rawhide report: 20060929 changes

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Sun, 2006-10-01 at 22:53 -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
>  Jesse Keating <jkeating(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  > On Sunday 01 October 2006 20:12, Jon Nettleton wrote:
>  > > I see the use of rm commands all the time in spec files. Â Can anyone
>  > > explain why this is used instead of the %exclude directive? Â Not
>  > > important, just curious because excluding files seems like a much safer
>  > > and elegant solution.
>  
>  > Lack of education?  Maybe the developer isn't aware of the %exclude, or
>  > would rather just remove the files anyway.  I use rm to remove static
>  > libraries rather than exclude them.
>   
1) I believe rpm has a bug where %exclude'd files are counted towards
the space the installed package will use on the system.
2)
http://www.fedora.redhat.com/docs/developers-guide/s1-rpm-more-guidelines... point #4
discourages fixing the filelist in %files.  I don't know how widely disseminated this
documentation has been (and the idea behind it is a tad dubious...)

>  What is sorely needed is a RPM reference... the "Maximum
> RPM" book is nice
>  as narrative, but almost useless at the time of designing a new .spec file 
This would be helpful.  But it is a very large task.  A start has been
made on this several times but I don't know if any of those are stil
actively maintaining content.

-Toshio

rawhide report: 20060929 changes

[Jeremy Katz]

On Sun, 2006-10-01 at 22:53 -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
>  Jesse Keating <jkeating(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  > On Sunday 01 October 2006 20:12, Jon Nettleton wrote:
>  > > I see the use of rm commands all the time in spec files.  Can anyone
>  > > explain why this is used instead of the %exclude directive?  Not
>  > > important, just curious because excluding files seems like a much safer
>  > > and elegant solution.
>  
>  > Lack of education?  Maybe the developer isn't aware of the %exclude, or
>  > would rather just remove the files anyway.  I use rm to remove static
>  > libraries rather than exclude them.
>  
>  What is sorely needed is a RPM reference... the "Maximum RPM" book is nice
>  as narrative, but almost useless at the time of designing a new .spec file 
There's the Red Hat RPM Guide -- I'm not sure if it's actually _better_
in this respect (... I've been doing packages for too long to be a good
judgge :-), but it's at least more current.

Online at http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/drafts/rpm-guide-en/ or
purchasable in printed form as well

Jeremy