[Fedora-packaging] README.Dist is preferrable to README.Fedora

Patrice Dumas pertusus at free.fr
Sat Oct 25 14:49:35 UTC 2008


On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 05:41:23PM +0300, Jussi Lehtola wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-10-25 at 16:22 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > These are not really fedora specific. If I was to review xtide I would
> > have insisted on this file being called xtide-README.dist. For example
> > it is also true for EPEL. And it is also certainly true for any
> > free software distribution. So I think that this is a bug in xtide.
> 
> To me README.dist is too generic - it sounds like it's from upstream.
> README.Fedora clearly tells you that the file is Fedora-specific.

But in general those files are not fedora specific. 

That being said I'd have no problem with a file named something else
than README.dist or README.distribution that convey the idea that it is
added by the distributor, and not upstream. What do you propose?

> Isn't EPEL also part of Fedora? I don't find anything wrong with using
> Fedora in EPEL packages. 

It is confusing at best.

> Or, if README.Fedora seems illogical to you to
> use in EPEL, make conditionals in the spec file so that the file is
> README.Fedora in Fedora and README.EPEL in EPEL.

That's much too complicated, especially when the file is not really
fedora specific as it is the case in all the cases I have seen.
 
> Of course, if you want to use the same package in other RPM-based
> distributions than Fedora/EPEL, then the Fedora suffix is out of the
> question.

It is not really the issue here. The point is that these files are in
general not fedora specific, it is not about the intention, but about
the status of the file.

--
Pat




More information about the Fedora-packaging mailing list