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distro conditionals in spec files |
2008-08-25
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Every time I have to write a spec file and do something specifically for a certain distro version (like, for example, packages were renamed or split or ...) I end up trying to remember what the last package was in which I used it to have the most up-to-date version of that macro.
And once in a while I try one and it doesn't work, for some silly reason. And these macros are always very fragile.
So, this weekend I rebuilt a package for RHEL5.2 and the spec was supposed to BuildRequire: libXv-devel for RHEL5 and onwards. But the check didn't take the 5.2 version number (with a period) into account and it failed.
So this time I decided to just create a wiki page on my wiki that I will update if I ever run into problems again, and will reference back to next time I need it. In the process I managed to simplify the macros and make them more correct, so everyone wins. And that includes you - because now you can go there too if you care! *
* Of course, if you're part of the 99.99999999% of people that doesn't write spec files for fun or money, then you probably don't!
I’ve always wondered about the distinction between packaging and build setup… Seems like doing the same work twice :/
Comment by Frej Soya — 2008-08-25 @ 15:37
Did you check if there’s an easier way to do this?
If you tried to do this reliably in Mandriva by parsing /etc/mandriva-release it’d probably drive you to drink, but that’s why we have the special %{mdkver} in Mandriva, which returns the version of the system in a format that’s always easy to use. Are you sure RH / Fedora doesn’t have something similar?
Comment by Adam Williamson — 2008-08-25 @ 15:38
I rolled something similar myself using awk instead of perl. Perl is an order of magnitude slower and uses more memory than awk to do the same thing.
%define release %(release=”`awk ‘{if ($0 ~ “CentOS release 5” || $0 ~ “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5” ) print “el5”; else if ($0 ~ “Fedora release 9”) print “fc9″}’ /etc/redhat-release`”; if test $? != 0 ; then release=”” ; fi ; echo “$release”)
You could make it more fedora or rhel specific, but you get the idea. Should I put this on your wikipage?
Comment by Jeff Schroeder — 2008-08-25 @ 18:27