Self-Introduction: Paul Howarth

[Paul Howarth]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> If you included direct links to your candidate src.rpm packages, that
> might be beneficial.

OK, will do.

> I've tried to take a brief look at your repository,
> but got lost in the number of sub-directories and packages.

Sorry about that; it's structured like that largely for historical 
reasons, and there are quite a few sites deep-linking in there so I'm 
loathed to restructure it.

> The libspf2 src.rpm I found is bloated with macros and conditional spec file sections.

True. I wouldn't be submitting a spec file like that for extras; project 
spec files have different goals, e.g. being more distribution-agnostic 
(the package is designed to build on Mandrake too etc.), and there's 
also a facility to build a compat- package containing only the shared 
libraries that can be installed alongside a later version of the library 
for compatibility with older apps. These things would be removed from a 
fedora-specific extras package.

However, I'm not so sure about my use of macros such as %{__rm}, 
%{__make} etc. Why is it bad to use these? If these are bad things, why 
does every version of rpm I've ever seen include the definitions? Why 
does the Fedora template spec file use:

%{__id_u}

instead of:

/usr/bin/id -u

?

Is there an official policy on the use of macros like these?

Paul.