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Revision as of 18:35, 17 February 2009


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Motivation

Current usage of alternatives is inconsistent, and rpm -qf /some/file will often say the file is unowned, even if it's been created by some package, which is especially misleading and annoying in case of binaries.

Solutions

All of the options below are currently used in Fedora packages.

Ignoring alternativized files

Pros:

  • less work for packager(?)

Cons:

  • rpm -qf /usr/bin/foo doesn't work
  • yum install /usr/bin/foo doesn't work

Using %ghost

%files
...
%ghost %{_bindir}/foo

Pros:

  • allows globs and generated file lists
  • rpm -qf /usr/bin/foo works
  • yum install /usr/bin/foo works

Cons:

  • duplicates in %files are forbidden by FPG.

Using Provides:

Provides: %{_bindir}/foo

Pros:

  • rpm -qf /usr/bin/foo works
  • yum install /usr/bin/foo works
  • repoquery --whatprovides /usr/bin/foo works

Cons:

  • unwieldy with lots of alternativized files