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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=483434
--- Comment #19 from Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com 2009-06-08 06:50:57 EDT --- Using macros for commands, which are supposed to be located in $PATH, doesn't add any value.
For example, a "configure" script would fail, if it searched for "cp" in $PATH, but an RPM build environment redefined %__cp to something outside $PATH. Same applies to lots of other tools. Their macro values expand to absolute path, but none of these paths are passed to the configure scripts, make, or other build frameworks. Even with major redefinition of macro values, you could not fully customise the rpmbuild without modifying the spec/src.rpm.
Often, macro usage adds further inconsistencies even directly in the spec files:
%{__rm} -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
find $RPM_BUILD_ROOT -type f -name '*.la' -exec rm -f {} ;
Once %{__rm}, below plain "rm". "find" is macro-less. /sbin/ldconfig in the scriptlets is macro-less, too.