Using generally useful macros

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:10:44 +0200, Nikolay wrote:

> Hi
> 
> There are a lot of generally useful macros in Fedora, which are not
> described in the Fedora wiki: %__awk, %__bzip2, %__cat, %__chgrp,
> %__chmod, %__chown, %__cp, %__cpio, %__file, %__gpg, %__grep,
> %__gzip, %__id, %__install, %__ln_s, %__lzma, %__xz, %__make,
> %__mkdir, %__mkdir_p, %__mv, %__patch, %__perl, %__pgp, %__python,
> %__rm, %__rsh, %__sed, %__ssh, %__tar, %__unzip, etc.
> 
> These macros are defined in /usr/lib/rpm/macros.
> 
> Some maintainers use them, some do not.
> 
> What is recommended way?

Not to use them.

Unless you ensure that the entire build framework uses them, too (which
means, for example, that you have "configure" scripts and Makefiles also
run what those macros expand to). Or else it would run whatever it finds
in $PATH. And if that is fine, why not rely on $PATH also in the spec
file?

Btw, the set of macros is incomplete, and some of the macros don't even
include an absolute path, e.g.

  $ rpm --eval %__awk
  gawk
  $ rpm --eval %__ln_s
  ln -s