On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 6:38 PM Anne Mulhern <amulhern(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hi!
I can tell that some packages are and some aren't, and that's as far as I can
get.
Also, I'm trying to understand how rpmautospec would help me. I grasp that the idea
is to avoid manually updating the changelog and release value. But what I don't
understand is how that actually improves my workflow other than dispensing w/ some minor
editing.
In my experience, using rpmautospec reduces the number of manual steps
that are required when updating a package. For example, when using
rust2rpm, you no longer need to make sure to preserve old changelog
entries, or keep Release number in sync, as they are now both filled
automatically. You also no longer need to paste a description of the
change in two places (i.e. the changelog entry *and* the commit
message), but just once.
Doing this "minor editing" and manually adding changelog entries
without rpmautospec might not be a problem if you're only maintaining
a dozen packages, but it is a massive time sink when you're
responsible for thousands of packages (like me).
Usually, I need to run rust2rpm also, and that will tend to lay down
plenty of changes, which I have to evaluate anyway. Or there's some other special
handling that the spec file requires on an update.
So, another question might be, who uses rpmautospec to their considerable benefit and
how?
I use it (and rust2rpm has defaulted to it for a while) because even
if it saves only a little bit of manual work, doing that manual work
is error-prone, and the time you spend on it is quite significant -
especially when you're maintaining lots of packages.
Fabio