On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 12:55 -0800, Kenneth Porter wrote: > --On Friday, December 17, 2004 3:21 PM -0500 Colin Walters > <walters@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Second, get rid of the RPM changelog embedded in the spec file; > > conceptually the goo to build a package is independent of the history of > > that goo. Just extract the history from the RCS, or have a separate > > file, or something. > > The changelog should reflect the history of the *packaging*, not the > package. By "independent", I mean that you do not need the packaging history to just build the package, and you don't need the build goo to read the changelog. The reason why globbing them together is bad is the same reason that the magic CVS tags like $Id$ and $Log$ are bad - it screws merging. Independent things should be in separate files. In the particular case of the packaging history, since we now depend on an RCS, we can just generate it from the RCS history when creating the SRPM (which is now basically just a convenient single-file cache of the packaging). > A lot of packages include a spec.in file which is then passed through sed > to install the version number in the spec file before a tarball is > generated. Eliminating this extra step would make it easier for upstreams > to provide RPM support by eliminating this extra step. Yes; but you still have the rpm revision number. I am arguing for its removal entirely. That's one less spurious thing you see in a diff between branches, and one less thing to merge conflict on.
