[Bug 507292] New: [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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Summary: [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507292

           Summary: [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps
           Product: Fedora
           Version: rawhide
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: medium
          Priority: low
         Component: rpm
        AssignedTo: pmatilai(a)redhat.com
        ReportedBy: nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net
         QAContact: extras-qa(a)fedoraproject.org
                CC: pmatilai(a)redhat.com, jnovy(a)redhat.com,
                    ffesti(a)redhat.com, fedora-fonts-bugs-list(a)redhat.com
    Classification: Fedora


(this is mostly a yum-level RFE, but it would be nice if we kept the same
depsolving logic in both apps)

The problem:

Selecting a font is a multi-criterium operation. We need to match on font
family, font style, language support, unicode support, etc. At any time all of
just some of those selection criterii can be provided by the user or
applications.

To have features like font auto-installation work reliably, this matching needs
to extend to the package database

Right now rpm is only allowing to specify atomic provides, so we can have a
font package that
Provides font(dejavusans)
and
Provides
font(:lang=el)

but there is no warranty both those provides are belonging to the same font.
There is no way to distinguish between a package that includes an actual greek
dejavusans and a package that includes a dejavusans greek-less file and another
totally different greek font

To workaround this rpm limitation we've been asking packagers to put font files
belonging to different font families in different packages. However:
1. many still don't
2. it's not technically possible for all font formats, for example the ttc font
format allows mixing of fonts with different characteristics in a single file

The ideal solution:

Ability to have Provides like:

font(comma-separated font name list|comma-separated style list|comma-separated
lang list) (rough mockup that probably needs refining)

And have deps like (dejavu|*|el) work in rpm

(yes a font can declare many different names, be available in many different
styles, cover many different languages)

For ttc files we'd then generate one Provides for each font included in the ttc
bundle

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507292


Jeff Johnson <n3npq(a)mac.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |n3npq(a)mac.com




--- Comment #1 from Jeff Johnson <n3npq(a)mac.com&gt;  2009-06-22 15:26:17 EDT ---
FYI: Permitting a '*' wild card in Requires: version/release with
the well-defined semantic
   Match everything else (i.e. return 0 from rpmvercmp)
is quite straightforward and handles most of what is commonly
desired without the implementation cost (and semantic definitions)
that need to be defined for a full blown *RE dependency matching
compatible with existing legacy RPM and *.rpm implementations.

For the record: Attaching new interpretations to a '*' character
will be treated by older RPM implementations as any other non-alpha,
non-digit, punctuation character would be treated. If the '*' is permitted
only at the end of release/version, then legacy rpm would treat the '*'
when encountered just like any pucnctuation character like '.' or "+".
Since the character is at the end of the comparison, adding a well-defined
    Return 0 == match from rpmvercmp
is almost certainly not change any prior comparison.

I'll leave it to you to guess where an implementation for '*" wildcarding
in dependency comparisons might be found.

And having RE's on Provides: is exactly the same effect as adding multiple
Provides:. Write a macro if you want a compact way to generate multiple
alternative
Provides: without the bother of typing separate Provides:. That just isn't that
hard to do, nor is there any need to invent alternate Provides: syntax that
forces rpm to implement regexp EVR comparison that I'm aware of.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #2 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt;  2009-06-22
15:51:52 EDT ---
(In reply to comment #1)

>  And having RE's on Provides: is exactly the same effect as adding
> multiple
>  Provides:. 
Generating multiple provides is trivial.

For a very common font such as DejaVu Sans, for example, which exports two
names, 7 faces, and 185 languages, that would mean generating 4463 Provides
instead of one

And that's assuming we never expose other parameters (such as default CSS
family) in the packaging

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #3 from Jeff Johnson <n3npq(a)mac.com&gt;  2009-06-22 16:14:15 EDT ---
There's no particular reason why all the multiple
explicit font attributes need to be re-mapped into
Provides:. For starters, generating multiple Provides:,
even if *lots* of those provides are generated and
never used, really hurts nothing but  Bloat!

Requires: is where the real pain with dependencies starts.
But if you order the most important criteria according
to what is likely top be used by packagers, then a trailing '*'
wild card achieves whatever you want. And with only
a single Provides: with the same carefully ordered string.

Or wait for RPM to change to implement RE's within
EVR comparison. Bring your ice skates, Hell is slippery
turf when frozen over.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #4 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt;  2009-06-22
17:09:54 EDT ---
(In reply to comment #3)
>  There's no particular reason why all the multiple
>  explicit font attributes need to be re-mapped into
>  Provides:.  
Please. I didn't remap all the explicit font attributes. There are 22 different
attribute fields in opentype alone, not counting the OS/2, Panose, Type1, etc
metadata fields that were defined before and that apps still use.

I only wrote about the three main attributes people care about and that they
commonly use to choose which font to install. *After* fontconfig massaged them
to remove any redundant or useless info.

If it was that easy to reduce the problem to "just generate a few atomic fields
and be done" I wouldn't open this RFE.

Modern font files are incredibly rich and compact data stores. They don't cost
millions to create for nothing. And the tech evolution is to increase wealth of
features in single font files, not to decrease it.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #5 from Jeff Johnson <n3npq(a)mac.com&gt;  2009-06-22 17:41:55 EDT ---
I'm well aware of the attributes of modern font families, having
studied fonts privately as a very complex data set to automate
dependency generation and classification for packaging usages.

But this is about packaging dependencies, not font attributes. There's
literally no compelling
usage case to map every detail of font attributes into rpm dependencies.

Can you do that? Sure you can. But its not gonna work for many reasons,
not the least of which you've already reported *repeatedly* is that packagers
are not using the font attribute dependency framework you have devised.

And -- if the font dependency framework needs RE pattern matching
implemented into RPM dependencies -- well, skate on bro!

I've suggested the following as likelier to "work":

1) order your font attributes in a single string L -> R by "importance".
Consider
"importance" as that which is most likely to be used by packagers or
easiest to automate. Yes, this will not be perfect, but some means to track
fonts in packaging is better than no means to track font dependencies in
packaing.

2) If you've chosen the L->R "importance" ordering carefully enough, then
a
trailing
'*' wiild card (which is entirely feasible afaik, unlike full blown RE pattern
matching,
within existing EVR comparisons) will allow a single axis of comparison that
will map from less specific to more specific. All depends on getting the L->R
ordering
correct. If you miss that, I suspect that font dependencies will be DOA. JMHO,
YMMV,
everyone's does.

Have fun!

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #6 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt;  2009-06-23
04:58:52 EDT ---
That wouldn't work, there are very different use cases that demand different
attribute L->R (depending if the user knows the font name he wants, for
example), and even if we could reduce to a single use case the main contributor
to the dep complexity is the languages a font support and language preference
ordering is definitely locale/user specific

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #7 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net&gt;  2009-06-23
05:01:27 EDT ---
(though as I wrote before, I'm not 100% convinced multi-attribute dep de-muxing
needs to be done at the rpm level, though the need starts at the cli package
manager level, and having yum & rpm process the same deps differently could be
a problem, no?)

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #8 from Jeff Johnson <n3npq(a)mac.com&gt;  2009-06-23 09:41:59 EDT ---
Well I hope you've brought your ice skates.

Adding regexp's to existing RPM EVR dependency comparisons is unlikely
to happen (beyond the trailing '*' that I've mentioned that you consider
"de-muxing"). I've looked at the issues at length.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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Juan P. Daza P. <tcpip4000(a)gmail.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Keywords|                            |FutureFeature, Triaged
                 CC|                            |tcpip4000(a)gmail.com




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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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devzero2000 <pinto.elia(a)gmail.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |pinto.elia(a)gmail.com

--- Comment #9 from devzero2000 <pinto.elia(a)gmail.com&gt; 2010-11-22 05:56:39 EST ---
As a personal opinion I agree with comment 8. These days rpm should rather try
to search for the unification of the algorithm for comparison with other
versions of  popular package managers such as DEB
http://man.he.net/man5/deb-version. See for example the request to introduce
the "~" in the rpm version/release by Suse

http://www.rpm.org/ticket/56

http://www.rpm.org/wiki/Problems/RPMSummitOSC09


Unfortunately it is not yet defined the semantics that "~" should have, but I
disgress here.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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Fedora Admin XMLRPC Client <fedora-admin-xmlrpc(a)redhat.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         AssignedTo|pmatilai(a)redhat.com         |packaging-team@fedoraprojec
                   |                            |t.org

--- Comment #10 from Fedora Admin XMLRPC Client <fedora-admin-xmlrpc(a)redhat.com&gt;
2012-04-13 19:08:45 EDT ---
This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning
to the new owner of this component.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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--- Comment #11 from Fedora Admin XMLRPC Client <fedora-admin-xmlrpc(a)redhat.com&gt;
2012-04-13 19:11:56 EDT ---
This package has changed ownership in the Fedora Package Database.  Reassigning
to the new owner of this component.

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507292

Ľuboš Kardoš <lkardos(a)redhat.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |lkardos(a)redhat.com,
                   |                            |nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net
              Flags|                            |needinfo?(nicolas.mailhot@l
                   |                            |aposte.net)



--- Comment #12 from Ľuboš Kardoš <lkardos(a)redhat.com&gt; ---
Couldn't rich dependencies be utilized somehow for solving this problem?

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[Bug 507292] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in rpm deps

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Ľuboš Kardoš <lkardos(a)redhat.com&gt; changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |CLOSED
         Resolution|---                         |WONTFIX
        Last Closed|                            |2016-03-11 08:41:28



--- Comment #13 from Ľuboš Kardoš <lkardos(a)redhat.com&gt; ---
As I wrote, we have support for rich deps in rpm now and we don't plan to
implement wildcards or regexps in deps. I am closing this as wontfix.

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