On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
> Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment
> about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they
> could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of
> advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.

Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went
into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines
anywhere.

~spot

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Tim Jackson wrote:
> Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment
> about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they
> could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of
> advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
>
> Currently it only has one passing reference to the Group tag (in
> relation to documentation-only packages).
>
We actually have discussed the Group tag at length in the Packaging
Committee. Previously there was a Guideline that said the group tag had
to be from /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS. Eventually it was decided to
drop the tag since it makes more sense to keep group information
separate from the rpm. Hence comps is where group information is
decided and the group tag is not something we worry about.

-Toshio

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On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
> > Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment
> > about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they
> > could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of
> > advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new contributors.
>
> Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went
> into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines
> anywhere.

We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally

How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that
upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.
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On Sunday 07 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
> > > Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment
> > > about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they
> > > could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of
> > > advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new
> > > contributors.
> >
> > Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went
> > into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines
> > anywhere.
>
> We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally
>
> How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that
> upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.

My .02€:

Even though it would be (is?) deprecated, it's not quite dead yet: it's still
mandatory in specfiles in current GA distro versions, it's still displayed
by "rpm -qi", prominently there in repoview and most likely there's a bunch
of other apps that use it for more or less important features to them (e.g.
the last time I checked: synaptic), and it is required by LSB. And it'll
take a long long time until making it optional in F-10 will trickle down to
other actively supported distro versions (think EL).

So IMHO it would be good to have *some* guidelines for its usage that
encourage consistency. I don't personally care exactly what that consistency
means, be it a list of "valid" values or simply "Unspecified" as the only
allowed value. rpmlint currently looks at /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS and
whines if the Group is not listed in it, some more info and thoughts at
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/458460

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On Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 07:45:39PM +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> On Sunday 07 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 02:03:25PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 18:24 +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:
> > > > Just a thought: perhaps the Packaging Guidelines should have a comment
> > > > about formulating the "Group" tag in spec files? If nothing else they
> > > > could tell you to go and read /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS, but a bit of
> > > > advice would probably be welcome there, especially for new
> > > > contributors.
> > >
> > > Hmm, I know that we decided that we were not concerned with what went
> > > into the Group tag, but I don't see this reflected in the guidelines
> > > anywhere.
> >
> > We decided to ignore Grup tag --- literally
> >
> > How about just calling Group tag deprecated and to mention that
> > upcoming rpm (>=F10) won't even require one.
>
> My .02€:
>
> Even though it would be (is?) deprecated, it's not quite dead yet: it's still
> mandatory in specfiles in current GA distro versions, it's still displayed
> by "rpm -qi", prominently there in repoview and most likely there's a bunch
> of other apps that use it for more or less important features to them (e.g.
> the last time I checked: synaptic), and it is required by LSB. And it'll
> take a long long time until making it optional in F-10 will trickle down to
> other actively supported distro versions (think EL).
>
> So IMHO it would be good to have *some* guidelines for its usage that
> encourage consistency. I don't personally care exactly what that consistency
> means, be it a list of "valid" values or simply "Unspecified" as the only
> allowed value. rpmlint currently looks at /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/GROUPS and
> whines if the Group is not listed in it, some more info and thoughts at
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/458460

We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew
Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a
bit. Most probably we can now just make people aware that we consider
the tag non-authoritative and while making best efforts to have its
content sane we advise using other sources of information like the rpm
metadata/comps stuff.

And about adding new tags/modifying old ones: I think we should
not. We should keep the current copy of GROUPS and try to fit the tags
in there to nearest proximity.
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On Monday 08 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:

> We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew
> Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a
> bit.

Regarding the LSB, I don't know whether the format of packages produced by rpm
in current Fedora releases is LSB compliant even without any Group tag
changes. If it is, I suppose making Group optional in specfiles does not
necessarily mean losing LSB compliance, rpmbuild could just insert some fixed
string as its value in the package headers it produces if the tag is not
present in a specfile.

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On Mon, 8 Sep 2008, Ville Skyttä wrote:


On Monday 08 September 2008, Axel Thimm wrote:


We certainly can't afford to lose LSB compliance (I didn't knew
Groups: was referenced there), so indeed we need to step down a
bit.


Regarding the LSB, I don't know whether the format of packages produced by rpm
in current Fedora releases is LSB compliant even without any Group tag
changes. If it is, I suppose making Group optional in specfiles does not
necessarily mean losing LSB compliance, rpmbuild could just insert some fixed
string as its value in the package headers it produces if the tag is not
present in a specfile.


Nod. Rpm will now slam in "Unspecified" into group tag if spec doesn't
specify it (this isn't in Fedora yet, I'm waiting for the freeze to be
over for the next rebase).


As for LSB compliance generally, we're about as non-compliant as we've
always been since rpm 4.0.


- Panu -

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