make tag and %{?dist}

Josh Boyer jwboyer at jdub.homelinux.org
Wed May 4 12:09:33 UTC 2005


On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 01:32:57PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > 
> > As for hardcoding being convenient, I disagree.  I think it's a pain.  I
> > do not see why everyone should have to hardcode that when it could be
> > done by the make targets.
> 
> Everything that is added to the tag on-the-fly is non-intuitive and bad.
> I would not like it if cvs-import.sh altered my spec file, and I would not
> like it if "make tag" used too much "magic" (like relying on CVS branch
> directory file names instead of evaluating RPM macros).

I don't think what I'm proposing would change the spec file.  If you have a
%{?dist} in your Release field, then it would evaluate to the correct value.
If a spec file didn't use %{dist} at all, then nothing happens anyway...

> 
> A bigger pain for package developers is that they want to do mass-upgrades
> for multiple distributions first. Only due to that comes their apparent
> need to release a single src.rpm for multiple distribution versions. If
> it's just the "Release" field that should be different, it takes only a
> second to alter it prior to cvs commit.

Yeah, it only takes a second.  But it's non-intuitive to me, and it could be
automated so I don't have to do that.  What's the point of using %{dist} at all
if I have to manually define it every single time?  Seems silly.

And yes, the goal is to do upgrades to multiple distributions for packages that
are simple enough to do that with.  The correct solution, as you described, is
to use the same spec file or src.rpm for all of the distributions, but that
doesn't work with the CVS setup we have today.

> > 
> > Are you sure tags aren't currently needed?  Take a look at the tobuild
> > file.  I certainly see tags listed there...  And if they aren't needed,
> > how does the build system (aka Seth) know what to build?
> 
> Yes, I'm sure. We have not needed tags for building so far, since we
> haven't used the tobuild file yet. It's only Seth who experiments with
> it so far. We have requested builds via the Wiki. And it was me who
> added the note about "make tag" to the documentation. ;)

Ok, but how does the builder know what to build today?  Is it simply taken from
CVS HEAD in each branch?

You might not need tags at this moment, but with the work Seth is doing you will
so I still think my proposal would be easier in general.  But that's just my
opinion I guess.

josh




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