[CentOS] Would this be considered a packaging bug?

Sat Feb 25 14:33:21 UTC 2017
Alice Wonder <alice at domblogger.net>

On 02/25/2017 06:12 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 02/25/2017 06:52 AM, Alice Wonder wrote:
>> https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=861692
>>
>> The source RPM there uses
>>
>> %if 0%{?rhel}
>> # not upstreamed
>> Patch500: 0001-disable-libe-book-support.patch
>> Patch501: 0001-fix-build-of-bundled-libzmf-with-boost-1.56.patch
>> Patch502: 0001-allow-to-build-bundled-libzmf-on-aarch64.patch
>> Patch503: 0001-impl.-missing-function.patch
>> %endif
>>
>> (and more than just those) resulting in those patches not being included
>> in the src.rpm because the rpm was not built on rhel/centos.
>>
>> My understanding was that platform specific patches were suppose to have
>> the %if macro where the patch is applied, but should not be where the
>> source for the patch is defined.
>>
>> Been a long time since I was a fedora packager so I don't know what
>> current packaging guidelines are, but that just seems wrong.
>>
>> Is it wrong?
>
> It depends .. in the Red Hat world, this is used so that patches are
> applied on RHEL but not on Fedora.  That is the purpose of that patch.
> The RHEL team added something to that patch for RHEL that is different
> than Fedora.
>
> So, if built on Fedora, those patches are not installed.  Why would that
> be a problem?
>
>

Ouch, looking through the spec file it appears that it doesn't use the 
normal %patch mechanism to apply patches. Looks like a change in RPM 
itself that I am not very fond of.

It appears to use a git command to apply patches from some kind of a 
patch macro, and apparently with sources too.

It's just my opinion but I am becoming less and less fond of RPM - just 
like I became less and less fond of GNOME which I use to really love.

Guess I now know how dad felt when all the AIX servers he managed 
started switching to that new-fangled Linux operating system...