What's worse: unowned directories or multiple owners?

Michael Schwendt bugs.michael at gmx.net
Tue Mar 28 18:05:24 UTC 2006


On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:39:30 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 10:32 -0700, Orion Poplawski wrote:
> > Maybe the third time is the charm:
> > 
> > I want to install a file into /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/ but I don't 
> > want to Requires: /usr/share/emacs/site-list/.
> It would have to be
> Requires(pre): usr/share/emacs/site-list
> because otherwise rpm won't be able to handle this correctly.

$ repoquery --whatprovides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
desktop-file-utils-0:0.10-6.1.i386
subversion-0:1.3.0-4.2.i386
autoconf-0:2.59-7.noarch
emacs-el-0:21.4-14.i386
libidn-0:0.6.2-1.1.i386
emacs-common-0:21.4-14.i386
fedora-rpmdevtools-0:1.5-1.fc5.noarch
gforth-0:0.6.2-6.fc5.i386
flim-0:1.14.7-3.noarch

$ repoquery --whatprovides /usr/share/emacs
emacs-el-0:21.4-14.i386
emacs-leim-0:21.4-14.i386
emacs-common-0:21.4-14.i386
fedora-rpmdevtools-0:1.5-1.fc5.noarch
gforth-0:0.6.2-6.fc5.i386

All of these packages claim that they provide Emacs' data directory and
would satisfy above "Requires(pre)". This is is harmless as long as you
get what you want: the directory with proper access privileges. If you
want anything inside that directory, you need a more strict requirement,
a different "Requires:".

> >   Do I own 
> > /usr/share/emacs... in my package or do I leave open the possibility 
> > that the dir is unowned if emacs in not installed?
> I definitely prefer multiple ownerships on dirs, because otherwise 
> "rpm -e multiple packages" won't handle it correctly and can cause
> orphaned directories to stay around in a system.
> 
> Of cause there exists the permission's issue on multiply owned dirs, but
> if packages are packaged correctly and don't try to play tricks with
> ownerships/permissions, this should be a non-issue.

What works with /usr/share/emacs may fail with other directories.

Be especially careful with the ownership and access privileges when
including a directory which belongs into a different package like Emacs.




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