Hi,
during the review process of gtrayicon (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524605) the question was raised whether or not the .gz suffix of compressed manual pages should be omitted in a spec file. Since rpm automatically compresses man pages in a transparent process, I prefer to avoid appending the explicit suffix and use asterisks instead. On the other hand, adding .gz doesn't hurt as long as the compression method stays unchanged. So my question is: Is it up to the packager to either use %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1.gz or %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1*? I couldn't find any recommendation on this in the Fedora guidelines.
Regards, Martin
On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 01:50:20PM +0200, Martin Gieseking wrote:
So my question is: Is it up to the packager to either use %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1.gz or %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1*? I couldn't find any recommendation on this in the Fedora guidelines.
IMO, * should be used so that if/when we change to bzip2 or xz or some other compression method you won't have to update spec files.
On 10/18/2009 05:09 PM, Chuck Anderson wrote:
On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 01:50:20PM +0200, Martin Gieseking wrote:
So my question is: Is it up to the packager to either use %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1.gz or %{_mandir}/man1/foo.1*?
Formally, yes, it's up to the packager.
I couldn't find any recommendation on this in the Fedora guidelines.
IMO, * should be used so that if/when we change to bzip2 or xz or some other compression method you won't have to update spec files.
Agreed. *.specs which use *.gz will break, should Fedora switch to a different compression.
... other distros did so many years, ago.
Ralf
Ralf Corsepius rc040203@freenet.de writes:
On 10/18/2009 05:09 PM, Chuck Anderson wrote:
IMO, * should be used so that if/when we change to bzip2 or xz or some other compression method you won't have to update spec files.
Agreed. *.specs which use *.gz will break, should Fedora switch to a different compression.
... other distros did so many years, ago.
I remember being told that the specfile should be agnostic as to whether manpage compression is used at all, let alone what kind it is. "*" accomplishes that (and ".*" doesn't, so it's still easy to get it wrong). If this isn't spelled out in the guidelines, it probably should be, because sooner or later a specfile that uses ".gz" is going to break.
regards, tom lane
Am 18.10.2009 18:21, schrieb Tom Lane:
Ralf Corsepiusrc040203@freenet.de writes:
On 10/18/2009 05:09 PM, Chuck Anderson wrote:
IMO, * should be used so that if/when we change to bzip2 or xz or some other compression method you won't have to update spec files.
Agreed. *.specs which use *.gz will break, should Fedora switch to a different compression.
... other distros did so many years, ago.
I remember being told that the specfile should be agnostic as to whether manpage compression is used at all, let alone what kind it is. "*" accomplishes that (and ".*" doesn't, so it's still easy to get it wrong). If this isn't spelled out in the guidelines, it probably should be, because sooner or later a specfile that uses ".gz" is going to break.
Thank you all for the clarification and for confirming my initial thought. I agree that it would be helpful to add a note on the recommended man patterns to the guidelines.
Regards, Martin
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Tom Lane