Back in June we had some discussion about directory ownership of /usr/share/gtk-doc(/html) that was caused by https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=604169
While there was no consensus on the mailing list and most people suggested to close this bug, things look different in the wiki now. Spot made a draft at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Revised_File_and_Directory_Ow... and it seems like this draft has become part of the packaging guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Packaging%3AGuidelines&diff=...
This raises a couple of questions for me: 1. (When) Was this ratified by the packaging committee? I don't see anything on the lists, the wiki or in the meetbot archives 2. If it was ratified, was it announced? It is a major change in the guidelines that every packager must be aware of. 3. Is this proposal been backed up by the RPM devs? AFAIR there were problems with left over directories when the packages were uninstalled in a single transaction but in the wrong order. Not sure if it still applies.
Regards, Christoph
On Mon, 5 Jul 2010, Christoph Wickert wrote:
Back in June we had some discussion about directory ownership of /usr/share/gtk-doc(/html) that was caused by https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=604169
While there was no consensus on the mailing list and most people suggested to close this bug, things look different in the wiki now. Spot made a draft at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Revised_File_and_Directory_Ow... and it seems like this draft has become part of the packaging guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Packaging%3AGuidelines&diff=...
This raises a couple of questions for me: 1. (When) Was this ratified by the packaging committee? I don't see anything on the lists, the wiki or in the meetbot archives 2. If it was ratified, was it announced? It is a major change in the guidelines that every packager must be aware of. 3. Is this proposal been backed up by the RPM devs? AFAIR there were problems with left over directories when the packages were uninstalled in a single transaction but in the wrong order. Not sure if it still applies.
As for 3) yes, we had a lengthy chat on the subject with Spot and others. Apparently some of my comments about multiple packages owning same directories being "bad" got taken a little too literally.
As long as /some/ package(s) owns a directory, they wont get left behind on uninstallation, and that's what really matters.
The ordering part is a whole different story. Rpm /could/ (but does not, currently) use directory hierarchy for additional ordering clues, this gives a nice natural order without everything having to explicitly require "filesystem" etc. Multiply owned directories cannot be use as ordering hints as they can and do mess ordering up massively. But that's all there is to it: rpm just needs to ignore such directories for ordering, and it needs to do so no matter what the Fedora guidelines are. If 20+ packages claim to own something like /usr/share/gtk-doc/html it Just Doesn't Matter, but if every single package owned /usr/bin or /usr/share, it would essentially mean the directory information cannot be used for ordering at all. Which is still just a lost opportunity for better install/remove order, not a "breaks rpm" situation.
- Panu -
On 07/05/2010 03:44 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
Back in June we had some discussion about directory ownership of /usr/share/gtk-doc(/html) that was caused by https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=604169
While there was no consensus on the mailing list and most people suggested to close this bug, things look different in the wiki now. Spot made a draft at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Revised_File_and_Directory_Ow... and it seems like this draft has become part of the packaging guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Packaging%3AGuidelines&diff=...
No, this is not the same thing. I wrote the draft last week, but the guidelines change dates back to March (and does not address the gtk-doc issue). That change originated from User:Notting/DirectoryDraft. It was approved by the FPC and ratified by FESCo. It was announced in the "[Guidelines Change] Changes to the Packaging Guidelines 04/09 - 02/10" email, sent all over the place on 03/03/2010.
My draft (Revised_File_and_Directory_Ownership) came from my conversations on #rpm.org with the RPM upstream and various folks involved in the gtk-doc discussion. It has not yet been considered by the FPC or FESCo, but I am happy to take comments on it, as I do plan to propose it in its current state.
~spot
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