[Fedora-packaging] printing textual messages in %post etc.?

[Ralf Corsepius]

Hi,

Do the GuideLines/Does the FPC have an opinion on rpms intentionally
printing out textual messages during installs?

At least, I could not find a corresponding paragraph in the GuideLines.


Background: tripwire's spec (Currently under review) contains this:

%post
...
# Print getting started help message
if [ $1 -eq 1 ]; then
	echo To configure tripwire, read: %_docdir/%{name}-%{version}/README.Fedora
fi


I don't have a strong opinion on this and actually am ambivalent.

On one hand, such messages can be helpful to users.

On the other hand, in general, rpm-installs should be silent as much as
possible.

Furthermore, I am not sure if printing such messages is safe. How does
rpm handle such messages/ to which file descriptor will they be piped
(stdout, stderr ...)? Will they desturb installers (yum, apt, shell
scripts, pirut, yumex, synaptic, ...) and what happens with such
messages during unsupervised installs?

Ralf

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203864