spec file changes: removing Release: and %changelog

[Colin Walters]

On Wed, 2008-03-05 at 13:19 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:

> How will the Makefile know whether the package is a Pre or Post release
> package? See:
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/NamingGuidelines#head-5ea39bbc33cf351b41b51325ac3527eff4c58dac

Ah, I thought you were talking about %pre/%post scripts =)

Ok.  So the root of the problem is here:

"When upstream uses versions that attempt to have meaning to humans
instead of being easy for a computer to order."

I think the first thing to at least try is to convince upstream to
switch to a compatible release sequence.

Failing that, the right thing in the new system would be for the
packaging process to include a script to transform the upstream version
sequence into one compatible with RPM.  Say versionscript.py.  That will
be run at build time on the Version: field to determine an
RPM-compatible version which will get included into the spec.

> > > Also, we'd be forcing a hardcoded dist tag here. 
> > 
> > There's nothing hardcoded; you should be able to override it.
> 
> +       (echo -n "Release: " && echo $${release}$(DIST) ...
> 
> You're hardcoding the value of the dist tag by default into the spec,
> then generating the SRPM. That means that the SRPM will always have that
> dist value, even if it is rebuilt.

Oh.  Doesn't it work to change $(DIST) there to be %{_dist}?

> Also, since this seems to happen on build operations, it means that
> packages get a dist tag, even if the packager doesn't want one.

Do we want packagers to have a choice?