$RPM_SOURCE_DIR (Was: Problems with core review)

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 07 February 2007 16:27, John Dennis wrote:
> 4) It's none of your business how I implement something as long as its
> not broken. Forcing every spec file to replace $RPM_SOURCE_DIR with
> $SOURCEn is consistency without merit. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote
> "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" It's my choice as
> to what constitutes a maintainable spec file based on value judgments
> and experience.
>
> +1 for Joe Orton
>
> -1 for the Bureaucrats in People's Central Packaging Committee and their
> police who seek to banish me to the gulag for crimes against spec files
> by virtue of improper thinking ;-)

So I was with you up until here.  One thing that I want everybody to remember, 
these guidelines aren't just for YOU and YOUR Package.  They are for ALL of 
us for ANYBODY who may inherit your package or need to fix your package in a 
pinch.  You can't emphatically say that you will own and manage your package 
for ever and ever, amen.  We don't write code for ourselves, we write code 
for the person who will inevitably inherit the code and have to deal with it.  
If everybody wrote code for themselves, most code would be completely 
unreadable to other people.  This is why we introduce things for consistency, 
so that when a security maintainer has to fix your package while you're on 
vacation, he can actually READ your specfile and know whats going on.  (this 
is well beyond the use of RPM_SOURCE_DIR vs SOURCEx, but then again so are 
your comments).

It is NOT about you, it's about your eventual replacement.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Release Engineer: Fedora
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