RE: %file questions

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Faheem Mitha [mailto:faheem@email.unc.edu]
> 
> I have been writing spec files for a few weeks now with a 
> fair amount of
> success.

Glad to hear it!

> However, I have some pressing questions.
> 
> 1) Why is it not possible to have spec -ba work with the short-circuit
> option? Aargh! Ie. why can't we have an rpm built from an already
> installed buildroot? Or at least skip the make part?

RPM is designed to work from -clean sources-.  In order to make the binary
rpm reproducible, it has to do everything from scratch.  If it didn't, you
could copy some files into the buildroot, and RPM would use them, making it
impossible for somebody else to create the same binary RPM.  

> 2) I need to install a bunch of files into the /etc 
> directory. However,
> only some of these are to be treated as config files. Now, I 
> would like to
> put
> 
> %files  ...
> 
> %config /etc/foo
> /etc    ...
> 
> thus designating only foo to be a config file and having all 
> the other etc
> files be treated as `ordinary' files. However, rpm objects to 
> files being
> listed twice. What would be a good way to handle this? One 
> possible way
> would be if there was some macro that did, essentially
> 
> %files 
> 
> %config /etc/foo
> /etc  except not /etc/foo
> 
> Does anyone know if this can be implemented? Any other 
> suggestions most
> welcome.

I'm not convinced that there should be anything other than config files in
/etc.  The FHS seems to say that /etc contains "Host-specific system
configuration".  But that's a side issue.
The easiest way to do that, is to explicitly list each of the files that
you're putting into /etc.  Something like
%config /etc/foo
/etc/foo.bar
/etc/foo.stuff
/etc/foo.whoosiewhatsit
...

The only other way that I can think of is to not put non-config files into
/etc.  :-)  HTH,
	Greg