Problems with core review

[Christopher Stone]

On 2/6/07, Christopher Stone <chris.stone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/6/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-02-06 at 20:34 +0000, Joe Orton wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 11:49:11AM -0800, Christopher Stone wrote:
> > > > Here are the issues in question:
> > > >
> > > > 1) Replace use of $RPM_SOURCE_DIR with %{SOURCEx}
> > > >
> > > > I asked about this in #fedora-extras since I did not understand
> > > > rpmlints Error message. f13 responded by saying you should just use
> > > > %{SOURCEx}.
> > > >
> > > > I agree with f13 on this issue because it is easier to identify in the
> > > > spec file where the source files are used.
> > >
> > > Con: it makes renumering Sources a pain, it's harder to use since you
> > > have to remember numbers not filenames.  This number/filename mapping
> > > trick doesn't scale well as anybody who has maintained spec files with
> > > more than a handful of patches knows.
> > >
> > > Insufficient justification for change.
> > >
> > > > 2) Add empty %build section even though its not required
> > > >
> > > > All php-pear packages include an empty %build section and php-pear
> > > > should not be an exception.  This was disccussed at length when
> > > > creating the php-pear spec file template.  Ville has real world
> > > > examples how this can cause problems.
> > >
> > > What are they, how do they apply to this package?
> > rpm doesn't generate debug-infos if %build is not present.
> >
> > > > Technical reason for changing:  rpm is unpredictable with no %build,
> > > > consistency among all pear packages
> > >
> > > It's worked predictably for the history of this package.
> > Only if all those package had been noarch'ed.
> >
> > If not, you surely have broken debug-infos.
>
> I brought up the fact that all php-pear packages are noarch, yet this
> requirement was imposed on all php-pear packages anyway.
>
> The php-pear default spec template adds an empty %build section even
> though I argued against such an addition.
>
> Therefore, I do not see why php-pear should be an exception to this
> rule.  Why is it imposed on all other php-pear packages except for
> php-pear itself?
>

It should also be noted, that if rpm can't figure out how to do things
correctly with arch specific packages that do not have a %build, then
can we really trust rpm to function properly on packages that are
noarch?

I think this is a valid argument.  If the logic inside rpm is so bad
that it can't handle things properly without certain tags, then we
better be really careful about how we format our spec files.