Quoting Michael Schwendt (2013-12-17 13:40:48)
What about "-javadoc" packages? Generated HTML
documentation in noarch
packages that may be displayed with any HTML viewer.
Here it seems packagers add a dependency on "jpackage-utils" only to
pull in dependencies that own the /usr/share/javadoc directory. It's
not jpackage-utils but javapackages-tools that owns it.
# repoquery --whatprovides /usr/share/javadoc
javapackages-tools-0:3.4.1-1.fc20.noarch
javapackages-tools-0:3.4.1-1.fc20.noarch
So now you know why they require javapackages-tools (jpackage-utils). They
mostly need if for directory ownership
# repoquery --whatrequires javapackages-tools|wc -l
2559
# repoquery --whatrequires jpackage-utils|wc -l
2557
As a result, one cannot install -javadoc packages without having to
install dependencies.
Why is it like that? Just to apply the "BuildRequires and Requires"
guidelines for Java packages also to -javadoc packages?
It's like that because directories have to be owned by some RPM. In this case
that's javapackages-tools
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Java#Javadoc_installation
Could we relax the Java packaging guidelines for -javadoc packages, please?
Not unless packaging of javapackages-tools is changed so that directories are
owned by some "java-filesystem" package. We've always had bigger fish to
fry
though so nobody bothers with this. javapackages-tools have negligent dep chain
anyway (python, python-lxml). It's not a simple guideline change, but rather
change of autorequires generator, packaging guideline, rebuild and manual fix of
older packages that do not use autorequires generator. It's doable though, but
very low priority (for me at least)
Besides there are probably still a lot of javadoc packages that pull in main package.
--
Stanislav Ochotnicky <sochotnicky(a)redhat.com>
Software Engineer - Developer Experience
PGP: 7B087241
Red Hat Inc.
http://cz.redhat.com