File Triggers (was Re: Proposal (and yes, I'm willing to do stuff!): Must Use More Macros)

[Ray Strode]

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Adam Williamson<awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 13:50 -0400, Ray Strode wrote:
>
>> > It seems to me it'd make sense to convert all these kinds of snippets
>> > into macros. Am I right, or is there a reason against doing this?
>> It would be awesome to get rid of the boilerplate.  Honestly though,
>> I'd rather the solution was "just works" than "replace giant glob of
>> muck with %{glob_of_muck}"
>
> Yes indeed, this would be best in many cases. Some can't really be done
> like that, though - like the snippets for Tcl and Python to define the
> version, directories for certain types of file and so on. They're
> just...informational. Defining them as macros seems the optimal
> solution.
Right, totally agree.

>> For instance, if a file gets dropped under /usr/share/icons/something
>> rpm should run gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/something
>> automatically.
>>
>> the gtk2 package should be able to drop a file in /usr/lib/rpm/redhat
>> that makes that happen.  likewise, desktop-file-utils should be able
>> to drop a file there to make update-desktop-database get run and so
>> on.
>>
>> I don't know how hard it would be to fix rpm to allow for that though.
>
> This is definitely possible; Mandriva (I know I talk about MDV a lot,
> I'm sorry, it's what I know! :>) does this, via an implementation called
> 'file triggers'. This is not yet upstream, though.
>
> The MDV patch that implements this is:
>
> http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/rpm/current/SOURCES/rpm-4.6.0-rc1-filetriggers.patch?view=markup
>
> MDV's wiki discussion of it is here:
>
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Rpm_filetriggers
>
> It appears to be something upstream has thought about several times.
> Here's an RPM 5 community discussion of it, with Jeff Johnson's
> thoughts:
>
> http://rpm5.org/community/rpm-devel/2959.html
>
> Here's a discussion from the rpm.org Wiki:
>
> http://www.rpm.org/wiki/Problems/Scriptlets
Oh neat!

> I'm not sure what the current status is for rpm.org - whether they're
> actively working on a solution for this side of things or what.
Panu, does this patch make sense?

> Oh, and please try to consider the original proposal in replies to this
> thread, as I sense a derail coming :). file triggers is certainly an
> interesting topic, but there are some snippets which just don't fit the
> case, see above.
Right, I'veretitled the subject.  I guess there are two different
halves to the spec boilerplate problem.

--Ray