RFE: Use generic names in packages

Panu Matilainen pmatilai at laiskiainen.org
Mon Jul 2 09:05:57 UTC 2007


On Sun, 1 Jul 2007, Paul W. Frields wrote:

> On Sun, 2007-07-01 at 10:42 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
>> On Saturday 30 June 2007 19:04:18 Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>> EPEL isn't targeted for Fedora. I did refer to the discussion. Think
>>> about this from the end user perspective rather than from the project
>>> perspective.
>>
>> "Fedora" is more than a distribution.
>
> Two suggestions:
>
> 1.  Short required blurb at the top of all README.Fedora such as:
>    "This documentation file is provided by the Fedora Project, from
> which this package is derived for use by a number of distributions.  For
> more information about this derivation, refer to <LINK>."
>
> 2.  Making use of the $DISTVAR in Makefile.common:
>
> --- Makefile.common.original    2007-07-01 16:43:18.000000000 -0400
> +++ Makefile.common     2007-07-01 16:44:00.000000000 -0400
> @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
> DIST = $(word 2, $(BRANCHINFO))
> DISTVAR = $(word 3, $(BRANCHINFO))
> DISTVAL = $(word 4, $(BRANCHINFO))
> -DIST_DEFINES = --define "dist $(DIST)" --define "$(DISTVAR) $(DISTVAL)"
> +DIST_DEFINES = --define "dist $(DIST)" --define "distvar $(DISTVAR)"
> --define "$(DISTVAR) $(DISTVAL)"
>
> BUILD_FLAGS ?=  $(shell echo $(KOJI_FLAGS))
>
>
> Then simply use README.%{distvar} in the spec.  My personal preference
> is alternative #1 because like others I see value in spreading the
> Fedora brand name.  If someone's already looking through README files
> it's hard to make a case that they'll turn up their noses at
> README.Fedora, simply because of the name, in the absence of any other
> docs covering their needs.

2) is one solution to "which repository this package came from" type of 
question, but if/when the package behaves exactly the same whether it's on 
RHEL (from EPEL) or Fedora, why should the name change? It's not 
distro-specific but packaging specific information so README.epel vs 
README.somethingelse is just wrong in that case. README.packaging (not 
distribution) or similar would be to the point.

1) is a good option, it just means defining the README.something to mean 
README.<vendor>, not README.<distribution> whereas it currently means
vaguely both or either.

 	- Panu -








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