$RPM_SOURCE_DIR (Was: Problems with core review)

Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com
Thu Feb 8 05:49:12 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-02-07 at 16:27 -0500, 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.
> 
It's interesting that you quote Emerson as he has several points which
bear on the present discussion.  Here's the paragraph the quote is
from::
'''
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul
has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow
on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak
what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every
thing you said to-day.
'''
In this section Emerson is not, as you imply, telling us to forgo
conformity to a standard (he talks about that elsewhere in the essay),
rather he is telling us not to hold ourselves hostage to our own past
decisions.  We should feel free to change our mind if today we don't
agree with what we wrote yesterday.  A "foolish consistency" is an idea
or decision which we made in the past and continue to espouse even
though we realize it doesn't agree with our current ideas or
understanding of the situation.

tibbs has already pointed out that many community reviewers have
expressed a fear that Red Hat'ers will hold to their past packaging
decisions so tightly that they will be unwilling to change their
packages when presented with the changes that need to be made.  It's
still a bit early to tell if this fear is well-founded but the reviews
so far make me hopeful that this is a groundless fear.

I have also observed that some packagers both within and without Red Hat
fear that the Packaging Committee is married to its own decisions and
that there's no way to get bad decisions reverted.  This is not true.
If there's something in the guidelines that you think should be changed,
please submit proposals for changes along with details of why the change
needs to be made so that the issue can be considered.  It's possible
your arguments hadn't been thought of when the guideline was written and
the packaging committee will remove or reword the guideline. (It's also
possible that the packaging committee already discussed that aspect and
felt the arugments for the other side outweighed them.  Look through the
mailing list archives if you want to see if that's the case.)

'''
 " 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' " Is it so bad, then,
to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and
Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood.
'''
In the second half of this paragraph Emerson points out why it is that
we, as open-source developers and packagers, need to value consistency.
Consistency is an aid to understanding.  It helps reviewers understand
what's going on in your spec file and it helps future maintainers of the
package understand that the deviations from the consistent approach were
done for a good reason that they had best understand.  Otherwise your
important changes are lost in the noise of small, personal, stylisitc
touches.

-Toshio
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