[Mageia-dev] Over-zealous rpmlint policy (rejecting rt)

Thu Jan 12 13:09:24 CET 2012

'Twas brillig, and Buchan Milne at 12/01/12 11:39 did gyre and gimble:
+> On Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:55:07 Colin Guthrie wrote:
+>> 'Twas brillig, and Buchan Milne at 12/01/12 09:12 did gyre and gimble:
+>>> I don't see why we shouldn't ship dirs in /usr/local ...
+>>
+>> I don't really see the point in shipping the dirs personally.
+>>
+>> Any separate extension that is packaged should not go into /usr/local
+>> anyway,
+> 
+> No one ever said they would, you snipped the part of my mail saying that 
+> 'locally installed' customisations, IOW, ones not managed by the package 
+> manager etc., go there.
+
+Yeah I know I was just trying to be explicit and clear with my reply and
+reasoning. I wasn't pointing out something you missed or anything. Sorry
+for the confusion (the opposite of what I had intended!)
+
+>> so these folders are purely for users doing this manually.
+> 
+> Yes. And that's why we provide /usr/local/share/applications?
+
+Hmm, that seems a bit silly to me. Why do we provide that? I'd say we
+should drop it unless someone can argue otherwise (maybe it's part of
+the filesystem layout spec?)
+
+>> I would expect that the "make install" stage of any extension
+>> installation would automatically create those folders anyway, so I
+>> really don't see the benefit of adding these empty folders into a
+>> package.
+> 
+> So, why would 'make isntall' of rt, which has been configured to itself live 
+> in a system location, explicitly create these directories?
+
+Because it's broken? Just because the upstream folks do something like
+that does not mean they are correct. I'd say that if any app's make
+install is writing things outside of their --prefix (with a few
+exceptions for things like udev rules etc. that need to live in /lib -
+but thankfully with the work done by Fedora folks even this exception is
+dying away) or --sysconfdir etc. then it's broken.
+
+>> The gain in doing so seems minimal to the point of useless.
+> 
+> I can remove the dirs in the package, but also, what is the benefit? On a 
+> system dedicated to running a request tracking system, should we explicitly 
+> make it more difficult to run said system that it would be if installed from 
+> source?
+
+I really don't buy the "make it more difficult" argument... that's what
+I was trying to highlight in my previous mail. The "make install" stage
+of any extension should make the dirs for you anyway... If that's the
+case it is precisely the same difficulty as without those dirs. If
+manual copying is required, then, yes, it is a tiny amount more
+complicated, but people will be following instructions anyway and if the
+added "complication" of a mkdir command or two will trip someone up,
+then I don't think that person should have root powers and able to write
+in /usr/local in the first place if this is their level of skill!!!
+
+
+Like I say, this is just my opinion, and I certainly don't feel super
+strongly on the topic. It's just that I wouldn't expect any rpm to own
+anything in /usr/local tree (and that goes for the one you pointed out
+above too!).
+
+Col
+
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
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+