To Require or not to Require?

[Paul Howarth]

On 08/11/2011 01:19 PM, David Howells wrote:
> I have a package (keyutils) that produces three RPMs: keyutils (programs),
> keyutils-libs and keyutils-devel.  The programs in the keyutils RPM depend on
> the libraries in the keyutils-libs RPM and pick up implicit dependencies thus:
>
> 	warthog>rpm -qRp keyutils-1.5.1-1.fc14.x86_64.rpm
> 	...
> 	config(keyutils) = 1.5.1-1.fc14
> 	...
> 	libkeyutils.so.1()(64bit)
> 	libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_0.3)(64bit)
> 	libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_1.0)(64bit)
> 	libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_1.3)(64bit)
> 	libkeyutils.so.1(KEYUTILS_1.4)(64bit)
> 	...
>
> So does the keyutils rpm need an explicit Requires on the keyutils-libs rpm in
> the specfile or is the implicit library dependency sufficient?

Library requirements should be implicit unless there's a good reason 
otherwise; see:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Explicit_Requires

> rpmlint does not complain, but, for RHEL, rpmdiff does.

What is the rpmdiff "complaint"?

Paul.