make tag and %{?dist}

[Michael Schwendt]

On Wed, 04 May 2005 18:01:12 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> As %{dist} currently is not provided by rpm-macros, I am using hard
> coded {.fc3|.fc4} to enable users to be able to rebuild the rpms.

Same here.  If permitted, I use these dist tags for convenience, so
that I don't have to do release number comparisons between multiple
distribution versions -- doing that would not be a big issue either,
though, but in some cases a packager needs to coordinate with Fedora
Core, too (e.g. security updates for packages moved between Extras and
Core and vice versa -- Sylpheed in my case). 

> Cluttering spec files with constructs like 
> %define fedora 3
> %{?!dist:%define dist .fc3}
> and the like to me is simply beyond reason.

Exactly.  What's the purpose of defining something, which isn't used
in the spec file?  It's just a source of errors, if e.g. I copy a spec
to an older distribution version and forget to adapt the constants.