Heads up: Noarch Subpackages

[Ralf Corsepius]

Panu Matilainen wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2009, Michael DeHaan wrote:
> 
>> Florian Festi wrote:
>>> Ville Skyttä wrote:

>>> As another solution for this problem we (ehm, Panu) will backport a 
>>> check that will make noarch packages (both regular and noarch) fail 
>>> to build if they contain binaries (==colored files==the right thing 
>>> to do even for emulators, bioses, cross compilers, ...[1]). This 
>>> additional check will be in place before koji will be updated [2].

>> I would prefer that, at least, there was a way to bypass this binary 
>> file check in the specfile for apps that have a legitimate reason to 
>> do it.
> 
> Yes, there's an override, precisely for these kind of reasons:
> 
> # Should binaries in noarch packages terminate a build?
> %_binaries_in_noarch_packages_terminate_build   1
> 
> Turning that off in spec will make binaries in noarch packages
How is "binary" defined?

[Related to it: The current definition as being used by the debug-info 
generation/build-id checks in Fedora's rpm are a PITA when it comes to 
packaging cross-tools/cross-libraries]

> a 
> warning, and it serves as documentation "yes we're doing something a bit 
> special, this is intentional" too.
Why does this check + warning exit all?

IMO, by marking a package/sub-package "noarch" the package's author has 
clearly noted his intentions to be wanting the arch to be ignored. Of 
cause this carries a risk of accidentally packaging native binaries into 
   supposed to be "noarch" packages, but these can pretty easily be 
distinguished from "foreign binaries" by other means (e.g. by 
restricting such checks to certain PATHs).

Ralf