%{?dist}, recommended or optional?

[Roozbeh Pournader]

I am encountering two (or even three) different approaches about the
%{?dist} tag in Extras, which has made me somehow confused.

These are the somehow contradicting advices:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/BuildRequests :

   It is recommended to use the suffix %{?dist} in the release field
   to distinguish builds for different OS versions.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageNamingGuidelines

   If you wish to use a single spec file to build for multiple
   distributions, you can use the %{dist} tag in the Release field.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistTag

   It is documented and standardized so that maintainers who wish to use
   it can do so.

So, the question is: how is a maintainer supposed to make his mind?
Should he take the BuildRequests advice and use it, unless he has a good
reason he shouldn't? Or should he take the other advices and do it only
if he wishes to, or when he believes it's really *needed*?

roozbeh