[Fedora-packaging] [RFR] Handling of %doc files

[Enrico Scholz]

Hello,

I have a Request For a new packaging Rule (RFR). Current rules are
saying that a package MUST work without %doc content. This implicates
that a package MUST work without dependencies introduced only by %doc
content.

In practice, people are packaging sample scripts as %doc files (with is
ok with me). Unfortunately, 'rpm' generates autodeps for these files and
the rpm maintainer does not want to change this. So, it may happen that
small packages with only a plain C binary get a dependency on 'perl'
just because a perl script was added into the %doc section. 'openvpn' is
an example for this.


Therefore, I suggest one of the following rules:

(a)  %doc files MUST not introduce new dependencies, or
(b)  %doc files MUST not be executable


Rule (a) is the more correct rule but more complicated to check.

Rule (b) is easy to check but might be too restrictive (e.g. a sh-script in
%doc will not hurt when /bin/sh is required by the core package already)
and abuses a more or less documented "feature" of rpm (autodeps are
generated for executable files only).




Enrico
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