[Fedora-livecd-list] Overriding package inclusions/exclusions in kickstart files

[James Heather]

Just spent a while debugging something that turns out to be at best
dubious behaviour in the way kickstart files are handled, and at worst a
bug.

My kickstart file starts by
including /usr/share/spin-kickstarts/fedora-livecd-desktop.ks, which is
the default Live CD build, and then makes some changes. Primarily this
involves adding more packages in.

The theory is that later %package instructions override earlier ones, so
anything that's included by default can still be excluded if I
explicitly exclude it, and anything excluded by default can be
explicitly included. This does work, but turns out to be rather fussier
than one might expect.

I was trying to include the OpenOffice stuff, and also the Java OpenJDK
stuff, including the browser plugin. So I had


        %packages
        java-1.6.0-openjdk*
        openoffice.org-calc
        openoffice.org-writer
        openoffice.org-impress
        openoffice.org-pdfimport
        openoffice.org-draw
        openoffice.org-graphicfilter
        %end


appearing after the include.

But I wasn't getting any OpenOffice stuff, or the browser plugin. It
seems, after some messing about, that this is because of the way wild
cards are handled. The default Live CD kickstart file contains


        %packages
        -java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
        -openoffice.org-*
        %end


I would have expected that my overrides would work, and include the
relevant stuff. But it seems that my wildcard inclusion of the openjdk
stuff wasn't enough to override the non-wildcard exclusion of the
plugin, and my non-wildcard inclusion of the OpenOffice programs weren't
enough to override the wildcard exclusion!

Is this expected behaviour? It seems weird to me.

In any case, I've now got it building as expected, by including
openoffice.org-* and java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin. This still isn't ideal,
because I get a whole load of OpenOffice extras that I don't want (e.g.,
language packs for a thousand languages I don't speak), and I can't see
how to get rid of them short of explicitly excluding them all, which
rather defeats the point of handling wildcards!

James
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