[Fedora-packaging] removal of pre-built files

Matthias Clasen mclasen at redhat.com
Thu Jun 18 19:24:34 UTC 2009


On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 15:17 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Orcan Ogetbil <oget.fedora at gmail.com> writes:
> > Toshio asked me to write up a proposal for clarification of the
> > removal of pre-built binaries. I came up with two proposals. I'd like
> > to have them considered and voted separately.
> 
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Removal_of_pre-built_binaries
> 
> I don't like Proposal #2 a bit.  The particular case that is going to
> bite me is that this policy requires me to rebuild documentation files
> (.pdfs, etc) from source.  Which is possible, but it vastly expands the
> BuildRequires footprint of the package, to say nothing of the build
> time.  And in return for what?  Nothing at all, that's what.  The excuse
> that upstream might perhaps have failed to update those files before
> shipping is as lame as can be.

Seconded. This will cause multilib conflicts in many packages, due to
randomness introduced in doc builds, such as generated ids, etc. Not to
mention the pointless build-time explosion. And where to stop ?
configure, Makefile.in, etc are technically also pre-built files. 

> It should be the packager's decision how much of a package needs to be
> routinely rebuilt.  I concur with the existing policy regarding
> rebuilding executables, but I don't think it should be expanded to
> take away packager's discretion for other things.

Seconded. The existing guideline is fine and clear enough.




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