rpmlint [was]: Intent to Package: BloGTK

[Ville Skyttä]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 20:28 +0100, Iago Rubio wrote:

> Is rpmlint a valid information source for rpm sanity ?

No, it is an imperfect tool to catch _some_ packaging insanity.

It does often report reasonable stuff, and quite often produces false
positives.

> Before reading Brian's post, I tried rpmlint at it seems it breaks some
> of the fedora's guidelines.

If this happens, please report a bug against rpmlint, or the guidelines.

> As example it screams when a package tries to obsolete itself.

Why would a package obsolete itself?  The only case I can come up with
right now is that a package tries to avoid an Epoch bump by using a
versioned Obsoletes on itself.  But that sounds, well, unusual, and
unmaintainable and non-deterministic after a few package revisions.

> This error clashes with the guidelines at:
> http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/s1-rpm-guidelines.html
> 
> 5.- The package may obsolete itself.
> 
> Any hint ?

Could someone who authored those guidelines comment?

If self-obsoletion is considered ok in packages, I'll add a filter to
the rpmlint config so we'll no longer see that complaint.