What is the usage of an empty RPM ?

[Laurent Rineau]

Le Tuesday 04 February 2014 19:30:16 Kevin Wilson a écrit :
> Hi,
> What is the usage of an empty RPM ? What it is for ?
> For example, on Fedora 20:
> 
>  rpm -qpl  libvirt-1.1.3.3-2.fc20.x86_64.rpm
> shows:
> (contains no files)

That package does not contain files, but it does contain other things: 
provides and requirements:

$ rpm -q libvirt --requires         
libvirt-daemon = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-config-network = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-config-nwfilter = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-libxl = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-lxc = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-uml = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-xen = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-interface = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-secret = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-storage = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-network = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-nodedev = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-daemon-driver-nwfilter = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt-client = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
/bin/sh
rpmlib(FileDigests) <= 4.6.0-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(PayloadIsXz) <= 5.2-1
$ rpm -q libvirt --provides 
bundled(gnulib)
libvirt = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19
libvirt(x86-64) = 1.0.5.9-1.fc19

-- 
Laurent Rineau
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LaurentRineau