[Fedora-packaging] gnome-shell extension packaging and directory ownership questions

Michael Schwendt mschwendt at gmail.com
Wed Aug 19 10:45:21 UTC 2015


Do we want to treat the "gnome-shell-extension-common" package as an
"artificial filesystem" package to be required by all gnome-shell-extension-*
packages to get directory ownership right?

  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#The_directory_is_owned_by_a_package_which_is_not_required_for_your_package_to_function

[...]

Inspite of its package name not ending with "-filesystem" (would that
be a MUST?), the package description suggests that it serves as a
filesystem package:

  $ rpm -qi gnome-shell-extension-common|tail -2
  optional functionality to GNOME Shell. Common files and directories needed by
  extensions are provided here.

It's only a single directory, and the "gnome-shell" parent dir is
pulled in via a dependency:

  $ rpmls gnome-shell-extension-common|grep ^d
  drwxr-xr-x  /usr/share/doc/gnome-shell-extension-common
  drwxr-xr-x  /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions

  $ rpm -qR gnome-shell-extension-common|grep -v ^rpm
  gnome-shell >= 3.17.4

[...]

It has been pointed out during review that the package is not '''an
"official" filesystem-package'''. And packagers happily take existing
packages as example. A single gnome-shell-extension package by somebody
from Red Hat owns the directory instead, giving the excuse to do it like
that, too. All other extension packages add a dependency on that
"artificial filesystem" package.

It would be good, if the gnome shell extensions addon package guidelines
commented on this.

Unless we don't care about such directory ownership issues at all anymore.
Then everybody is free to add "multiple ownership" in random ways.
But so many complex guidelines -- for what?

That there are filesystem packages such as "hicolor-icon-theme" is not
pretty already. What other filesystem packages are not named -filesystem?

Trying to explain that to [new] packagers can become quite a task.

[...]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:NamingGuidelines#Addon_Packages_.28gnome_shell_extensions.29

Addon Packages (gnome shell extensions)

Packages that extend gnome shell should begin with the prefix
gnome-shell-extension-. In particular, this prefix should not be
pluralized (ie: it should not be gnome-shell-extensions).


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