Fedora 12 Features Proposed for Removal

[Peter Robinson]

>> 1. He is running the autotools while building.
>
> It's your personal opinion that this is "low quality", many other packagers
> don't agree with their assertion and the guidelines (intentionally) don't
> ban it.
>
> FYI, all our KDE 3 packages reran the autotools during the build (KDE 3's
> "make cvs" feature) and our KDE 3 compatibility packages still do. (KDE 4
> doesn't use autotools, as you know.)
>
> But we have had this discussion many times, it's getting boring. I'd really
> appreciate if you stopped using your personal opinion as examples of "bad
> packaging quality".

Agreed.

>> 2. Some of his packages contain abuses of %*dir variables.
>> e.g.:
>> %post
>> %{_bindir}/<someotherscript>
>
> That's indeed unnecessary (why not just run the script without the absolute
> path?), but not invalid either.

Because I've probably picked up the scriptlet from somewhere else. If
its pointed out to me I fix most issues, but then as mentioned above
alot of that stuff comes down to personal choice and is neither right
or wrong.

>> 3. Some of his packages don't honor rpm input %*dir variables
>> (e.g. datadir), but rely on %{_prefix} only, despite they install to
>> %{_datadir}
>
> That one should be fixed, the guidelines say to use macros where possible,
> especially in cases like this. While %{_prefix}/share is not going to
> produce a broken package, %{_datadir} is better (because it can change, as
> unlikely as that is) and the reviewer should have pointed this out.

I do believe I use the proper macros just about everywhere, certainly
I'm not perfect and will fix them if I miss something but its never
done intentionally, and fixed when pointed out.

Peter