/usr/share/applications weird error on koji

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2012-03-19 at 15:44 +0100, Alec Leamas wrote:
> On 03/19/2012 02:32 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote: 
> > On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Alec Leamas <leamas.alec at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >         On 03/19/2012 12:50 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote: 
> >         > Hi,
> >         > 
> >         > I'm trying to build a package. It's an update on
> >         > SparkleShare package. I build it locally with mock and
> >         > everything seems ok. Package is built successfully. But
> >         > when I try to build it on koji I get an error and build
> >         > fails on both f16 f17 targets:
> >         > "The databases in [/usr/share/applications] could not be
> >         > updated."
> >         > which I think has something to do with the
> >         > desktop-file-validate on %install phase
> >         > 
> >         > See the relevant koji task and build log for more:
> >         > http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=3908835
> >         > 
> >         > Any help appreciated
> >         > 
> >         > -- 
> >         > Nikos Roussos
> >         > 
> >         > 
> >         > 
> >         From the log, it looks  like it fails in
> >         'install-data-hook'. If so, the culprit might be some
> >         Makefile.am. Have upstream updated a Makefile.am to include
> >         'desktop-file-install', failing when not making a "real"
> >         install int /usr?
> >         
> >         If this is right, you should be able to verify that the %
> >         install hasn't really begun when the error is triggered. If
> >         unsure, put some simple 'echo' statement in top of %install
> >         to verify that it hasn't been started.
> >         
> >         If this doesn't help, scanning the generated Makefiles for
> >         'desktop-file-install' and/or  '/usr/share/applications'
> >         might give  a clue
> >         
> > 
> > Actually there is an:
> > 
> > install-data-hook:
> >         update-desktop-database $(datadir)/applications 
> > 
> > which seems to be the exact point that installation fails
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> You must patch that, it will try to update /usr/share/applications
> when building the rpm which of course isn't acceptable. 
> 
> For Fedora, you could just remove the target and run automake;
> autoconf; ./configure, given that you run update-desktop-database as
> part of %install.
> 
> However, this should really be resolved together with upstream. If
> they want to keep the functionality, one could possibly:
> 
> - Move it from install-data-hook to a separate target such as
> 'install-desktop' and let users run this as part of installation into
> system dirs.
> - Only run update-desktop-database if $(datadir)/applications is
> writeable:
>     
> Personally, I would prefer the first one. To  mess
> with /usr/share/applications when DESTDIR is set is not really the way
> 'make install' is supposed to work. And updating
> $(DESTDIR)/$(datadir)/applications  just doesn't make sense. 
> 
> But I'm just a newbie, maybe someone else has a better piece of advice
> here?

The usual way to make this selectable is with a parameter for the
package's configure script, something like --disable-desktop-update .

These days, it seems like very few packages need this any more. I don't
know if upstreams have just stopped doing update-desktop-database at
install time, or if they mostly somehow dynamically detect whether to do
this or not.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net