Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Currently it only has one passing reference to the Group tag (in relation to documentation-only packages).
Thanks
Tim
On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines anywhere.
~spot
On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines anywhere.
We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally :)
How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.
On Sunday 07 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines anywhere.
We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally :)
How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.
My .02€:
Even though it would be (is?) deprecated, it's not quite dead yet: it's still mandatory in specfiles in current GA distro versions, it's still displayed by "rpm -qi", prominently there in repoview and most likely there's a bunch of other apps that use it for more or less important features to them (e.g. the last time I checked: synaptic), and it is required by LSB. And it'll take a long long time until making it optional in F-10 will trickle down to other actively supported distro versions (think EL).
So IMHO it would be good to have *some* guidelines for its usage that encourage consistency. I don't personally care exactly what that consistency means, be it a list of "valid" values or simply "Unspecified" as the only allowed value. rpmlint currently looks at /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS and whines if the Group is not listed in it, some more info and thoughts at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/458460
On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 07:45:39PM +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
On Sunday 07 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines anywhere.
We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally :)
How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.
My .02€:
Even though it would be (is?) deprecated, it's not quite dead yet: it's still mandatory in specfiles in current GA distro versions, it's still displayed by "rpm -qi", prominently there in repoview and most likely there's a bunch of other apps that use it for more or less important features to them (e.g. the last time I checked: synaptic), and it is required by LSB. And it'll take a long long time until making it optional in F-10 will trickle down to other actively supported distro versions (think EL).
So IMHO it would be good to have *some* guidelines for its usage that encourage consistency. I don't personally care exactly what that consistency means, be it a list of "valid" values or simply "Unspecified" as the only allowed value. rpmlint currently looks at /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS and whines if the Group is not listed in it, some more info and thoughts at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/458460
We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a bit. Most probably we can now just make people aware that we consider the tag non-authoritative and while making best efforts to have its content sane we advise using other sources of information like the rpm metadata/comps stuff.
And about adding new tags/modifying old ones: I think we should not. We should keep the current copy of GROUPS and try to fit the tags in there to nearest proximity.
On Monday 08 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a bit.
Regarding the LSB, I don't know whether the format of packages produced by rpm in current Fedora releases is LSB compliant even without any Group tag changes. If it is, I suppose making Group optional in specfiles does not necessarily mean losing LSB compliance, rpmbuild could just insert some fixed string as its value in the package headers it produces if the tag is not present in a specfile.
On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Ville Skyttä wrote:
On Monday 08 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a bit.
Regarding the LSB, I don't know whether the format of packages produced by rpm in current Fedora releases is LSB compliant even without any Group tag changes. If it is, I suppose making Group optional in specfiles does not necessarily mean losing LSB compliance, rpmbuild could just insert some fixed string as its value in the package headers it produces if the tag is not present in a specfile.
Nod. Rpm will now slam in "Unspecified" into group tag if spec doesn't specify it (this isn't in Fedora yet, I'm waiting for the freeze to be over for the next rebase).
As for LSB compliance generally, we're about as non-compliant as we've always been since rpm 4.0.
- Panu -
Tim Jackson wrote:
Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
Currently it only has one passing reference to the Group tag (in relation to documentation-only packages).
We actually have discussed the Group tag at length in the Packaging Committee. Previously there was a Guideline that said the group tag had to be from /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS. Eventually it was decided to drop the tag since it makes more sense to keep group information separate from the rpm. Hence comps is where group information is decided and the group tag is not something we worry about.
-Toshio
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Axel Thimm -
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Tim Jackson -
Tom Callaway -
Toshio Kuratomi -
Ville Skyttä