[Bug 472060] Review Request: mumbles - growl like notification system for gnome

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472060





--- Comment #2 from Christoph Wickert <fedora at christoph-wickert.de>  2008-11-19 08:28:46 EDT ---
John, Fabian, as I'm sponsoring both of you I'd like to take this opportunity
for a little lesson in packaging practice ;)

(In reply to comment #1)
> Just some quick comments on your spec file.  Some changes will make your life
> easier in the future because there will be less pain for maintaining ;-)
> 
> - You can use 'Source0:
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/%{name}/%{name}-%{version}-1.tar.gz' instead
> of 'Source0: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mumbles/mumbles_0.4-1.tar.gz'

The packaging guidelines state that macros should be used "consistently", but
not where ever possible. This means not to mix different macro styles (e.g.
%{buildroot} and $RPM_BUILD_ROOT) but it does not mean that every appearance of
foo needs to be replaced with %{name}. In this example the only macro that adds
real value is %{version}, because you don't need to change the Source0 tag on
updates.
Using %{name} would only add value for a packager, who maintains _a_lot_ of
packages from sf.net, so he can use the same Source0 tag for all his spec
files. In fact I know many packagers, who try to avoid macros in the source url
so it can be used by wget and friends more easily. Quote from
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#macros "Having macros in a
Source: or Patch: line is a matter of style"

> - Replace '%setup -q -n mumbles-0.4' with '%setup -q -n %{name}-%{version}'

see above: '%setup -q -n mumbles-%{version}' is sufficient

> - Add AUTHORS PKG-INFO README to %doc

Please don't add PKG-INFO, all it's info is in the spec file and thus in 'rpm
-i mumbles'

> - Shouldn't '%{_datadir}/%{name}' be '%{_datadir}/%{name}/' and
> '%{python_sitelib}/mumbles' be '%{python_sitelib}/mumbles/'?
>   There is a mixture of macros and the name.

Which is perfectly ok. "Use macros instead of hard-coded directory names" only
applies to directories that are covered by one of the macros from 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/RPMMacros

I hope I have made some things more clearly for both of you. Nevertheless
Fabian's comments are all helpful and show that he has read and understood the
Guidelines well.

@Fabian: If you continue working like this I will nominate you for becoming a
sponsor in the near future.

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