[Fedora-packaging] are subpackages required for optional loadable libraries?

Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik at greysector.net
Wed Feb 27 01:31:41 UTC 2008


On Wednesday, 27 February 2008 at 02:23, John Dennis wrote:
> Historically when a package includes optional support via a loadable module 
> we've put the loadable module in a subpackage. For example a package might 
> include a module supporting mysql so we would create a mysql subpackage 
> which contains the mysql loadable module and the subpackage would require 
> mysql. I presume the reason we've historically created these little 
> subpackages is to deal with dependency issues.
>
> But suppose your package includes dozens of optional loadable modules does 
> it still make sense to create dozens of subpackages?

IMHO it does make sense. I know disk space is cheap, but still I prefer
to keep my system free of any unnecessary stuff.

> It starts to get unwieldly really quick.

What exactly is the problem?

> Is it permissible to skip all the subpackages, have 
> the rpm include all the loadable modules, and put the onus on the user such 
> that if they edit the main package's config file to load the mysql module 
> it's up to them to make sure the mysql libraries are installed?
>
> Here's another issue: Suppose the package puts it's loadable modules (e.g. 
> .so's) in it's own subdirectory for loadable modules. RPM's automatic 
> dependency checking seems to completely miss all the external libraries 
> needed at run time to load one of the modules and resolve all it's 
> references. The net result is none of these external dependencies get 
> picked up at all. Is that O.K.? How does one deal with that in a spec file? 
> The answer to this question probably drives the answer to the first 
> question.

I find it odd that it doesn't find the dependencies on external libraries.
Could you show the package to us? It may be a bug in the dependency generator.

> FWIW, the upstream spec file does not create a subpackage per loadable 
> module. It does create a subpackage containing all the loadable modules. 
> When we build the loadable module subpackage the resulting rpm is missing a 
> lot of the external dependencies on external .so's. That's unfortunate but 
> I'm thinking it's the only practical way to deal with it. Trying to factor 
> out all the dependencies will be a packaging nightmare and it's going to be 
> a headache for users trying to install, they're going to have to deal with 
> lots of subpackages. At least with the scheme where all the loadable 
> modules are in one subpackage you won't pull in stuff you don't want or 
> need, but at the expense of not pulling in something you might need. 
> Comments?

Well, without seeing the package, it's difficult to comment on this.
I still think it's desirable to split the parts that require additional
external libraries as much as possible.

Regards,
R.

-- 
Fedora contributor http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DominikMierzejewski
Livna contributor http://rpm.livna.org MPlayer developer http://mplayerhq.hu
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"




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