Unpackaged files checking - oddities

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2015 09:51:19 -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:

> My guess would have 
> been that %excludes would have been developed specifically for making it 
> convenient to exclude a directory in the main package that needs to be owned 
> by a subpackage.

Rather: a quick way to not package a file. Especially helpful as the %files
section becomes really clear about that file (which you maybe want to 
exclude only temporarily).

Deleting files in %install is considered cleaner by many, because it
ensures that a file is not found inside the %buildroot anymore and cannot
be included accidentally either. The drawback is obvious: There ought to
be a comment explaining why a file is deleted.

When distributing the buildroot contents to subpackages, I would recommend
using less wildcards and carefully listing which files/dirs to include where.
Some packages play with %files option -f with generated lists of files, and
it can get really ugly then and less readable (and more risky when even inserting
%exclude in the generated Files Lists).

-- 
Personally, I would like %exclude more if there were an explicit %include to
include an excluded file in another subpackage. But %include is for spec file
fragments not %files sections.