Re: %file questions

["Kenneth Porter" <shiva well com>]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2000 22:37:05 -0400 (EDT), Faheem Mitha wrote:

>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?

That's part of RPM's policy of not allowing unbuildable SRPM's to be
created when a developer performed some unpackaged manual tweak at the
end of the process.

What I *would* like to see is for RPM to allow short-circuiting a -ba
but forcing the packages to be written to /dev/null, to debug the final
packaging step without going through what might be time-consuming but
working build and install phases.

Another possibility is for rpmbuild to deliberately "corrupt" the
packages with some header byte value that prevents rpm the package
installer from accepting the file for installation.

One might argue that a package corrupted in this way could be fixed by
a utility, but then someone who would be willing to write such a fixer
would be just as able to hack RPM itself to bypass the short-circuit
protections. (If anyone writes such a utility, I suggest giving it the
name "penny". ;-)

Ken
mailto:shiva@well.com
http://www.sewingwitch.com/ken/
http://www.harrybrowne2000.org/