[Fedora-packaging] Question about how libgcj-devel requires zlib

[seth vidal]

On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 13:26 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 12:40:10 -0400,
>   seth vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 11:33 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > > While playing with custom repos I noticed that libgcj-devel requires a
> > > file from zlib-devel that isn't explicitly provided. In a mixed x86_86 / i386
> > > environmentment this requires looking at the file lists to see that
> > > libgcj-devel-4.3.2-4.i386 needs zlib-1.2.3-18.fc9.i386 and that
> > > zlib-1.2.3-18.fc9.x86_64 isn't good enough.
> > > 
> > > I am not sure if this is actually a bug though and if so, which package
> > > is at fault. I was hoping to get some guidance here on whether or not
> > > this is something I should bugzilla.
> > 
> > I think that file dep is explicit - b/c libgcj-devel-4.3.2-4.i386 needs
> > the i386 version of that package - not the x86_64.
> 
> It requires a specific lib file that is different between the i386 and x86_64
> versions of zlib-devel. However the different files are not "provide"d by
> either zlib so you can't find the dependceny without using the file lists.
> 
> There are over 700 -devel rpms in Fedora where the i386 version of the
> package doesn't "provide" anything not "provide"d by the x86_64 version.
> presumably most of these put their libs in different places and they
> get pulled in because yum (or whatever) ends up looking through the file
> lists.
> 

Yes - that's a file dep - that's how they work. I'm not a big fan of
them, either.

If you'd like to lead a crusade to get rid of them I'll happily follow
but seeing as I've tried it twice I'm not going to lead another one :)

-sv