On Mon, Apr 06, 2020 at 11:53:55AM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot via devel wrote: > Le lundi 06 avril 2020 à 09:03 +0200, Petr Pisar a écrit : > > > > # Build an HTML manual with ascidoc > > %bcond_without docs > > # Perform the tests > > %bcond_without tests > > I feel the above syntax is hopeless. You need boilerplate (in all eln > specs!) to explain that foo_without tests means enabling tests. > > Good syntax does not need line-by-line comments. > The comments are not because of a bad syntax of %bcond_without. The comments explain what "docs" means. It can be a user manual for a package, it can be an API documentation for another package. While "docs" or "tests" looks self-decribing, there can be another identifiers whose meaning or implications are not so obvious. Here in the exampl it actually provides a very useful hint that if you enable documentation, you will need ascidoc (probably a new dependency). If your only issue is the %bcond_with" and %bcond_without semantics, then I agree. But that's only a matter of chosing a better word. Nothing that cannot be fixed. However, in my opinion, the build knobs should not be burried in the spec file for the sole purpose of building this one package. The knobs should be visibile on RPM level in the source RPM package so that one can query a repository for what new depencies I will need when I enable "docs". Now one needs to inspect each spec file or rebuild the SRPMs. Quite an expensive task. Also the knobs should be inheritable. There should be a distribution-level "docs" knob and then a package-level "docs" knob. So that a distribution can disable/enable the documentation everywhere with one switch and at the same time can specify the exceptions for the individual packages. I really recommend to people interested in this topic to look on Gentoo USE flags because this is a feature extensively used there so it's more probable it's done right there: A packager's view <https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/use-flags/index.html> A user's view <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Working/ A USE flag index <https://www.gentoo.org/support/use-flags/> A fancier USE flag index <https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags/> -- Petr
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