Re: xmlspec Update

[Jeff Johnson <jbj redhat com>]

On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 02:44:50PM -0400, Peter Bowen wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-05-30 at 14:19, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> > 
> > Poorly designed or not, the existing spec file parser will have to be
> > retained for quite awhile, probably forever. That does not have to stop
> > development of a new and better (and alternative) XML parser.
> 
> While the current spec file parser needs to stay around, would it be
> possible to tighten up the spec file syntax a little in RPM 4.1?  One of
> the things that makes spec file parsing hardest appears to be the fact
> that %files, %prep, and other "keywords" can be redefined.  Maybe in 4.1
> there can be a list of reserved words that can't be defined.

I'd *love* to tighten up the parser, but here's the current rules
for character set usage in name-version-release:

	0) Anything that's not forbidden is allowed.

	1) The '-' character is forbidden in version and release.

So that check is already implemented, perfectly I might add.

> 
> I think that this would significantly clean up spec file parsing, and
> make specfiles a little more readable.

Personally, I consider the abilty to overload existing tokens like %build
an important (albeit entirely unused) feature, as it's possible to drop
an expansion into existing spec file sections without a ripple.

Similar things can be said for
	# %vendor_specific_macro
which might expand in a scriptlet to, say,
	#
	<vendor specific stuff>
but only in an appropriate context, i.e. %vendor_specific_macro is defined.

YMMV.

73 de Jeff

-- 
Jeff Johnson	ARS N3NPQ
jbj@redhat.com (jbj@jbj.org)
Chapel Hill, NC