[Fedora-packaging] Re: Call rpm during rpmbuild

[Axel Thimm]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 10:14:20AM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 10:14 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 08:35:00AM -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > >> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > >>> I'm right in thinking that it's bad to call rpm from rpmbuild?
> > >> Yes.
> > > 
> > > But weren't recursive rpm calls fixed many, many years ago, so that
> > > this is fine to use since ??? (hopefully including RHEL3)?
> > 
> > Stop the heresy, you'll raise spot's blood-pressure... :)
> > 
> > In practice, it may or may not work (not more often than not, in 
> > chroot'd buildroots), but it's best to simply say "just don't do it".
> 
> FWIW, I asked Panu about this, and this was his reply:
> 
> For the casual "rpmbuild -ba foo.spec" usage, querying from within a
> build is what I consider "mostly harmless". However in the Fedora
> context, where packages will be built within a chroot with no guarantees
> about the rpm version outside vs inside the chroot, it WILL break sooner
> or later due to db environment mismatch. Eg if RHEL 4 was used as the
> build host, in FC[567] (or thereabouts) chroot the query would fail.
> 
> Mock *could* of course clear the environment (the infamous 'rm -f 
> /var/lib/rpm/__*') before entering the chroot and after exiting it to 
> avoid the issue. Or one could configure them to use DB_PRIVATE locking, 
> but lets not go there... :)
> 
> *****

Yes, that's true, which is why I use a common rpm version both outside
and inside the chroots :)

> So, basically, don't do it. We can't be sure it is safe, or predictable,
> and we know there are at least some failure cases.

I've been using is for several years though for the same reason as
Richard: I needed to find the exact package evr for some builds,
mostly in order to create strict dependencies.

But I've been cheating, so I never got into troubles ever. :)
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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