Re: make tag and %{?dist}

[Michael Schwendt <bugs michael gmx net>]

On Wed, 4 May 2005 10:20:10 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:

> On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 04:01:26PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > > Q: Can't I just hardcode the .fc3 into the Release?
> > > A: No.
> > An increasing number of packages do this already. There is
> > no difference between hardcoding %dist or using a constant instead.
> 
> In fact, I think using a constant is *better*. That way, the %dist macro can
> be used to indicate "this should build on any currently-supported release"
> and hard-coded values imply "there's some per-distro-release differences in
> this spec file".

Good point, actually. Using these macros pretends that the package
supports multiple build platforms through a simple change of a few macro
definitions.  A package should not do that, if it was made for [and tested
with] a specific distribution version only.

Effectively, if a spec file doesn't access either %fedora or %rhel, it
should not define them. And if it defines them, it should not override
system-wide settings, such as predefined by redhat-rpm-config.