Chicken & Egg Problem with FC4 "Minimal" Buildroot

[Paul Howarth]

On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 16:37 -0400, Warren Togami wrote:
> Jeffrey C. Ollie wrote:
> > This afternoon I was packaging a new Python module for potential
> > inclusion in Extras.  The package builds correctly in a "standard" mock
> > FC4 buildroot.  When I tried to build the package in a "minimal" FC4
> > buildroot it fails in the setup stage.  This is because the Fedora
> > Python specfile template uses Python dynamically to determine a number
> > of parameters.
> > 
> > For example, the Python specfile template contains the following:
> > 
> > Requires: python-abi = %(%{__python} -c "import sys ; print sys.version[:3]")
> > 
> > When built using a "minimal" FC4 buildroot, you get the following error
> > during the setup phase:
> > 
> > Executing /usr/sbin/mock-helper chroot /var/lib/mock/fedora-4-i386-core-minimal/root /sbin/runuser - root -c "/sbin/runuser -c 'rpmbuild -bs --target i386 --nodeps /builddir/build/SPECS/python-gnupg.spec' mockbuild"
> > sh: /usr/bin/python: No such file or directory
> > error: line 18: Version required: Requires:       python-abi =
> > 
> > This is because the "minimal" buildroot does not install Python
> > directly, nor is Python a dependency of anything installed with a
> > minimal buildroot on FC4.  This is not a problem on FC5 because Python
> > gets pulled into the mininmal buildroot as a dependency.
> > 
> 
> the mock "minimal" is not a functional minimal buildroot.  The Fedora 
> defined minimal buildroot includes python as one of the expected things 
> that should be there.

Not for FC4. None of the packages in the BuildRequires "Exceptions"
section of the packaging guidelines has a dependency on python in FC4.

The spec file template could either have a workaround for this, such as
the hack that was discussed for the same issue for ruby packages, or,
probably better, the "Requires: python-abi" line could simply be removed
from the template since rpmbuild will add a "python(abi)" dependency
automatically for FC4 and later, and new FC3 packages are no longer
being accepted into Extras without a *really* good reason.

Paul.