Re: BUILD: gdm spec file changes

[Erik Walthinsen <omega cse ogi edu>]

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, James Henstridge wrote:

> The problem with this is that the spec file that gets distributed with the
> tarball will contain the prefix and directory preferences of the source
> packager.  If these settings differ from the user's machine, then problems
> will occur if they do a "rpm -ta ...".
Yeah, to a point.  I always build with the defaults (chroot is so
handy...), which are always /usr, /etc, /var.  I don't see any real
point in making those configurable based on the ./autogen prefix
parameters, since only packagers run that script anyway (for people
getting pre-packaged stuff, either tarballs or RPMs).  If someone wants to
relocate something (once locales and such work sanely), they can either
install it from the tarball and run ./configure with --prefix=wherever, or
they use a relocatable RPM package, in which case the defaults are moot.

Then again, I just tested it out and noticed that ./configure really does
rewrite the spec file.  So there might possibly be a reason to do it even
for non-packaged builds of it (i.e. grab CVS, munge source, ./autogen.sh
--prefix=/usr/local, make dist, rpm -ba), but if packages are relocatable
anyway (RSN), it may not be an issue.

I dunno, I guess I need to hear someone else's arguments to sway me one
way or another.  The only thing is that it is indeed more work to make
sure all the spec.in files are set up like this.  It means verifying that
the autoconf stuff is providing the proper variables (trivial, I think),
and AC_SUBSTing them (*should* be done already).  So on that basis I'd say
not, but that's a lame excuse ;-) 

> As I said, this will not be in gnome 1.0, so it is probably not worth
> making these sort of changes now.
But in the meantime, is there a good reason not to include the Prefix:
line in the spec file, for packages that don't leave %prefix?  There's
always the chance that someone might think they're fully relocatable and
try to do so, end up with a semi-functional (no locales) package, and
complain...

For packages that aren't relocatable due to the use of /etc, there's not
much we can do anyway.  Then again, they're usually packages like gdm that
have to run as root anyway.

TTYL,
    Omega

         Erik Walthinsen <omega@cse.ogi.edu> - Staff Programmer @ OGI
        Quasar project - http://www.cse.ogi.edu/DISC/projects/quasar/
   Video4Linux Two drivers and stuff - http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~omega/v4l2/
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