[GuidelinesChange] Prepping BuildRoot For %install

[Tony Nelson]

At 9:30 AM +0300 4/11/07, Panu Matilainen wrote:
>On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Tom \spot\ Callaway wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 2007-04-09 at 23:44 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com> writes:
>>>> It is important to properly prepare the BuildRoot in the %install
>>>> section of your package before it is used. Every Fedora package MUST
>>>> have an %install section that begins with either:
>>>> %install
>>>> rm -rf %{buildroot}
>>>> or
>>>> %install
>>>> rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
>>>
>>> Just outta curiosity, why is it not considered an RPM bug that every
>>> specfile has to take care of this detail?  Seems like it'd be trivial
>>> to fix it once instead of memorializing this oversight in every package
>>> till the end of time.
>>
>> This is absolutely an RPM bug. However, since RPM is riddled with bugs,
>> we can either hope they get fixed, or work around them with guidelines
>> until they get fixed.
>>
>> Historically, filing bugs against items like this have been futile since
>> it would "change RPM's behavior", as broken as it may be.
>
>I've always been more than a bit puzzled by this... if the same logic was
>applied everywhere we'd be stuck with egcs 1.x (or something) as the C
>compiler because newer versions change the behavior and "break" a large
>amount of existing software.

When the C compiler is changed, already compiled programs keep running.
When RPM is changed, already built RPMs stop working.  /Thats/ what freezes
RPM's behavior.
-- 
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