Usage of %{__macros} in our .specs?

[Jos Vos]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 04:51:44PM +0100, Till Maas wrote:

> On Wed December 17 2008, Martin Sourada wrote:
> 
> > I've been told, by an upstream developer of one of the packages I
> > maintain, that I/we should use e.g. %{__make} instead of make in
> > our .spec files in order to have our packages more compatible/portable.
> 
> Can you please exlain in more detail, why this is more compatible/portable? 
> Everyone can just adjust the PATH variable if some other make command is 
> desired. But why should it be?

Well, I don't like those macros too, but they *are* useful for
cross-OS/distro portability and I understand what someone means when
saying this:

(a)  Having to set PATH etc. for an RPM build is not done, IMHO,
     and you can simply give examples where the PATH order gives
     for different tools results you might not want (e.g. you
     want make from /usr/local/bin and perl from /usr/bin, while
     there is a perl in /usr/local/bin that you do not want to use).

(b)  If you want to use, say, a local "make" (e.g. GNU make on a
     UNIX system has no GNU tools) and you have that installed in,
     say, /opt/gnu/make/bin/make (just a weird example, fill in
     yourself), then you are able to use a RPM build environment
     with %__make defines as /opt/gnu/make/bin/make.

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos at xos.nl>
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