[Fedora-packaging] Re: Request to drop %(%{__id_u} -n) in preferred buildroot

[Axel Thimm]

On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 09:10:16AM -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 July 2006 08:51, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > I would agree, if it weren't for undefined behaviour at best when
> > someone uses the buildroot-less specfile on a system not supplying a
> > default buildroot.
> >
> > In the worst case you could end up with an empty buildroot and
> > %install/%clean operations on the buildroot could suddenly really
> > happen in the live filesystem.
> 
> Have you tried (within a chroot) to build a package w/out a chroot on our 
> modern rpm?  (I haven't yet, other things to do today...)

You mean w/out a buildroot?

I did try on FC5, and there

BuildRoot: foo

is effectively the same as

%define buildroot foo

No errors/warnings if BuildRoot is missing (and of course no sensible
default, in fact no definition of the buildroot macro at all), which
is a bit disappointing if you ask me.

But that's only half the story. Even if we would find FC5's rpm to do
something sensible w/o a BuildRoot tag, we cannot rely only on modern
rpm's behaviour and try to check whether a missing BuildRoot tag would
create havoc there or not. You would need to check this behaviour with
past rpm versions, both packaged in Red Hat/Fedora products/releases
and even upstream. We don't want to be responsible for any breakage,
not even outside Fedora/RHEL.

I don't think it's worth while risking it. Better/easier to

a) override it in buildsystems aynway, and
b) put a sensible default in the guidelines

-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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