[Fedora-packaging] Question about how libgcj-devel requires zlib

[Paul Howarth]

Denis Leroy wrote:
> seth vidal wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 11:33 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>>> While playing with custom repos I noticed that libgcj-devel requires a
>>> file from zlib-devel that isn't explicitly provided. In a mixed 
>>> x86_86 / i386
>>> environmentment this requires looking at the file lists to see that
>>> libgcj-devel-4.3.2-4.i386 needs zlib-1.2.3-18.fc9.i386 and that
>>> zlib-1.2.3-18.fc9.x86_64 isn't good enough.
>>>
>>> I am not sure if this is actually a bug though and if so, which package
>>> is at fault. I was hoping to get some guidance here on whether or not
>>> this is something I should bugzilla.
>>
>> I think that file dep is explicit - b/c libgcj-devel-4.3.2-4.i386 needs
>> the i386 version of that package - not the x86_64.
> 
> do you know what is the technical reason for this dependency ? Exotic 
> build system ?

With a simple bump and rebuild of zlib (using the new rpm), zlib-devel 
would pick up provides of zlib-devel%{?_isa} (on i386 this would be 
zlib-devel(x86-32) and on x86_64 it would be  zlib-devel(x86-64)). 
Dependencies of zlib-devel%{?_isa} could then be added in other packages 
where needed.

Ideally there would be a mass rebuild prior to F10 of all packages where 
this is likely to be useful (e.g. everything providing a -devel package) 
that have not been rebuilt using the new rpm. This would ensure that 
spec files using %{?_isa} dependencies would be compatible with all 
supported Fedora releases after F10 goes gold. By this I mean that in F9 
the expansion of the %{?_isa} macro would be empty and hence 
transparent, and for F10 onwards, any package that might be expected to 
provide %{?_isa} dependencies will do so. Without a rebuild prior to 
F10, it's possible for instance that a rebuild of zlib early in F11 
development could lead to F11 packages having zlib-devel%{?_isa} 
dependencies added, but packages built from the same spec files on F10 
would have broken deps because the zlib-devel%{?_isa} dependency would 
be unsatisfied there.

Paul.