New directive for %files section (%exclude)

[Philip Prindeville <philipp_subx redfish-solutions com>]

I'm new to the list, so apologies if this has already come up.

I was working recently on a .spec file for the proftpd package for the 
1.3.1 release, and ran into the following issue.

There are multiple dynamically loadable plug-in modules that can be 
built as part of this software package, but not all of them are useful 
for all users, and not everyone wants to pull in a kitchen sink-full of 
required packages to support it (such as libcap, libwrap, openssl, 
krb5-libs, openldap, etc).

So I was thinking that the base package would include the more useful 
modules, or the modules that don't have any external dependencies, and 
then the remaining modules that require LDAP, Postgres, SSL, MySQL, etc. 
couple be splintered into optional sub-packages.

So far so good, right?

Well, then it starts getting complicated, because I have:

%package
...

%files
...
%{_libexecdir}/mod_*.so
...

%package mysql
...
%files mysql
%{_libexecdir}/mod_sql_mysql.so

etc.

And indeed, predictably, /usr/libexec/mod_sql_mysql.so ends up being 
included in both packages.

So I was thinking that having a directive like:

%files
...
%exclude %{_libexecdir}/mod_sql_mysql.so
%{_libexecdir}/mod_*.so

would be handy.  That is, first all the patterns would be applied and 
the list built, then %exclude directives would be applied and the list 
whittled down.

This would also be handy in another instance:  Fedora doesn't require 
the .a and .la files that libtool seems to want to install 
unconditionally (grrrr)... and having a script like:

%install
make install DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT
rm -f $DESTDIR/%{_libexedir}/mod_*.{la,a}
...

seems just plain wrong.  So the %exclude directive would exclude them 
from the package, but also tell RPM, "Yes, these files will be left 
behind as artifacts of the 'make install', and I know that, so don't 
crap out telling me that files were left over" (or whatever).

Does this seem reasonable, or am I missing something?

-Philip