[Fedora-packaging] Re: [Bug 198881] Review Request: perl-POE-Filter-IRCD

[Paul Howarth]

Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>>> "PH" == Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> writes:
> 
> PH> Is it just me or shouldn't packagers actually have a reasonable
> PH> understanding of what's in their spec files?
> 
> Stuff creeps into specfiles to workaround rpm brokenness, deal with
> bizarre bits of the buildsystem, changes in requirements between
> Fedora versions, and more.  I'm sorry, but if you require every
> packager to understand all of that up front then I'm afraid you've set
> the barrier way too high.
> 
> Or, look at it this way.  You're a new packager, trying to package up
> a perl module.  There's a find line in the specfile template.  You
> don't think it does anything, but it's there in the template for a
> reason, right?  After all, those people who wrote the template must
> know a whole lot more about the process than you do.  Unfortunately
> there's no descriptive comment or hint as to when you're supposed to
> use and when you aren't.  What might change to make it necessary?  Is
> that change completely within your control, or will perhaps some perl
> update or buildsys switch make it necessary?  How can you even know?
> 
> So just leaving it alone makes a ton of sense.
> 
> Easily solved by us just adding a single freaking line saying "don't
> use this for noarch packages".

Perhaps a better idea, which wouldn't result in spec files cluttered 
with comments, would be for each language SIG to have a page on the wiki 
explaining the magic in their spec templates?

Paul.