Chicken & Egg Problem with FC4 "Minimal" Buildroot

[Jeffrey C. Ollie]

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.

Jeff

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