Re: specfile & %doc

[Frank Cusack <fcusack fcusack com>]

On July 14, 2006 11:17:44 AM -0600 "Nathanael D. Noblet" <nathanael gnat ca> wrote:
> Hello,
>    I have a spec file for a program that has worked fairly well. I
> wanted to modify it to include some extra example scripts in the
> /usr/share/doc/program_name-version directory. I added the mkdir and cp
> statements to the specfile after the install portion. They run, however
> when packaging the directory gets deleted. I see in the output that it
> runs
> Executing(%doc): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.47825
>
> In the /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.47825 I see the following.
>
> export DOCDIR
> rm -rf $DOCDIR
> /bin/mkdir -p $DOCDIR
>
> and then a copy statement that is supposed to put the files back,
> however it no longer has the files I copied into that location. How is
> this supposed to work? I have the maximum RPM book, however I'm in the
> process of moving so it is in a truck a few hundred kilometers away.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.

AFAIK this is undocumented.  If any of your %doc directives use a
relative pathname, the rm,mkdir,cp steps are done.  If all of your
%doc directives are full pathnames (start with '/') this doesn't
happen and the files simply get marked as doc files.

The cp happens from the $RPM_BUILD_DIR.  Maybe you are copying sources
(ie, Source: directives), which %doc can't find.

You can either cp from %{SOURCE*} into the builddir during
setup/build/install, and use %doc with unqualified paths, or install
them yourself (as you've done) and list them in %files with full paths.
If you install them somewhere into docdir (/usr/share/doc by default)
you don't need to explicitly mark them %doc; but it won't hurt.

-frank