Disttag for Fedora 7 and beyond

Michael Schwendt bugs.michael at gmx.net
Sun Jan 7 22:00:30 UTC 2007


On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:02:46 -0600, Callum Lerwick wrote:

> > It is not a bug. Semantically, a hardcoded dist tag can mean that the
> > package has been developed (e.g. configured, patched, customised) and
> > tested for the single specified distribution release and that nothing else
> > is supported by the packager (not even if it works by coincidence).
> > Rebuilding it without packaging changes and updating the dist tag
> > automatically would be a bug.
> 
> I dare say this is crackrock. The dist tag says what distribution the
> package was built against. Not "intended to be built against".

The tag (if it's not a macro) exists in the spec file, which is the source
of a package for a specific target distribution. The spec file, the
%changelog and the entire source rpm may contain stuff that is specific to
that target distribution. Don't pretend that there's only one spec file
for all distributions.

> And
> hardcoding it does not actually stop it from building on the "wrong
> dist", does it? You've only created a confusing situation where you have
> a distag of say "fc42" on a package even though it was built against
> fc666.

And? The binary packages are still marked as being for "fc42", which is
wrong. In the repository this is indication that the package needs
maintenance. The point is, it needs somebody to modify the src.rpm before
the binary rpms would jump to "fc666".

> If you're really that worried about a package only building on a certain
> dist, put a (pseudocode)  'if (%{dist} != fc42 and %{dist} != "") then
> exit 1'  check in %prep or something. That will ACTUALLY kill the build
> on the "wrong dist".
>
> IMHO, %{?dist} should be a MUST unless there's a damn good reason for
> it, like the "giant huge mirror killing binary blob of game data" case.

It is worth enough that %dist finds its way into the binary %changelog or
doesn't. Either case is very bad IMO when %dist is used.

Don't take away the packager's freedom with lousy policies.




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