[Fedora-packaging] Can multiple packages built from same source?

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 16:07:08 +0800, Lin Gao wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>      We have a package already built in Fedora called: ironjacamar, 
> which only produces several core jars used by JBoss AS 7. We also want 
> to built a ironjacamar standalone environment which can make the 
> ironjacamar running without JBoss AS 7 environment, but this standalone 
> environment has different libraries than JBoss AS 7 has. So we plan to 
> built a overall new package called: ironjacamar-standalone, which 
> produces the ironjacamar standalone environment, it will use the same 
> source as the package: ironjacamar uses.  I want to know if it is 
> approved in Fedora?

Would it not be feasible to build an ironjacamar-standalone subpackage
from the existing ironjacamar src.rpm package? Additional build-time
dependencies could lead to problems/conflicts or make the build process
more complicated if a single src.rpm were to be used.

I'm not aware of any policy that would disallow reusing a source archive
in multiple src.rpm packages in order to build something differently.

The reason to not build everything from within a single src.rpm could also
be that either of the builds may need to change more often (with regard to
bug-fixing/patching).  For example, some existing src.rpms build the
included source two times, once for GTK2 and a second time for GTK3, and
put the resulting builds in separate binary rpms. However, if either of
the builds required more maintenance, the updates for the other one would
be superfluous. Hence it could be more convenient to split into two
src.rpm packages (with the added risk that avoiding file conflicts becomes
more difficult).

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