relocatable packages ?

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 23:31:38 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Is there an example of rpm packaged as a relocatable rpm in fedora core or
> extras ? Is there a consensus against or for relocatable packages ?  
> 
> I have seen nothing about that in the fedora wiki, especially in the
> Packaging Guidelines where it could have been, and relocatable doesn't give
> any result on the mailing list.

Searching the list archives in mbox format should give a few results. I'm
sure we've commented on it a few times, when somebody submitted a package
with "Prefix: %{_prefix}" which was not relocatable actually. In nearly
all cases at fedora.us and on this list, when somebody had specified a
Prefix in a spec file, it turnt out to be a packaging bug, because other
files in the package did not start with that Prefix, or executables had
non-relocatable path information built in. Effectively, when installed
somewhere with a different prefix, the software would be broken. Also keep
in mind that installing a relocatable package outside the standard Fedora
filesystem hierarchy might create many directories, which don't belong
into any core package and which could be created with insufficient file
access permissions depending on superuser's umask.

For simple and really small packages, which can be proven to be
relocatable, probably nobody minds a "Prefix: %{_prefix}". But generally,
it is not worth it and better is avoided.

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