non fedora-usermgmt user creation

[Ville Skyttä]

On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 19:55 +0100, Enrico Scholz wrote:
> ville.skytta at iki.fi (Ville Skyttä) writes:
> 
> > If this stuff really must exist in the first place, the above is kind of
> > a step in the right direction.  However, I'm not at all happy with the
> > build nor install time dependencies on fedora-usermgmt and I think they
> > can be easily avoided.
> 
> I really do not understand the problems with the Requires: or BuildRequires:

Sure, because you have use for fedora-usermgmt.  For me, it tries to
solve a problem I don't have which is already bad, and worse, it does
create new problems while attempting to do so.  See below.

> 1. We are speaking about packages for Fedora Extras;

Yes, but not limited to those.  Well, at least I am not.  The more in
general things are FE only the more it negatively affects what I get in
return from the time I spend with FE things.

> 2. 'fedora-usermgmt' is only a very small package which does not add
>    new dependencies. It behaves exactly like a plain 'useradd' without
>    explicit activation.

I know it does not exist in all distros I'd like to just rebuild FE
packages for, and I'm not at all interested in maintaining it for those
distros, especially because it'd be easy to fix the problems it
currently causes right at the source.  A POC was in my previous mail.

> 3. Would it be really a problem to maintain another spec-file?

Do I really have to answer that question?

> >     # Note lowest common dependency: no fedora-useradd or mgmt here
> >     Requires(pre): /usr/sbin/useradd
> 
> This would not work well with vanilla installations because you can not
> tell an installation order there. Therefore, 'fedora-usermgmt' must be a
> Requires(...):

No it doesn't because it's not *required at all* in this approach.  And
like I mentioned, users of fedora-usermgmt have to configure it
beforehand anyway in order to get it to make any difference.  In your
words: "It behaves exactly like a plain 'useradd' without explicit
activation".

> The '-u 126' would be wrong here because accordingly LSB you should not
> assign static uids in this range.

Please try to see the big picture.  I thought it would have been crystal
clear without explaining that it was for illustration purposes only.  I
also said that the whole scenario where you picked it from wouldn't be
applicable to many FE packages at all, and already regret including that
use case for completeness.

> I really dislike such complicated scriptlets.

Disagreed with "complicated", especially when compared to the
alternatives.  And this is not only about liking or disliking: see above
for some real problems in terms of extra work for no gain
fedora-usermgmt may and does inflict on people.  And again, what I
provided was a quick example, not a specification, about how
fedora-usermgmt-like stuff could be implemented in a less intrusive way.
Sadly, from your comments I can't help getting the feeling that you're
not really interested in achieving that in the first place.