[csw-maintainers] /usr/local references, and packages

[Philip Brown]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org> wrote:
> Excerpts from Philip Brown's message of Mon Jan 24 17:51:01 -0500 2011:
>
>> Ben, what you said is incorrect. This is not some "new policy".  It
>> has **always** been an issue. From day one. And I have always
>> enforced it, whenever it came to my attention.  With the understood
>> exception of "oh this is just documentation examples, so can be
>> ignored".
>
> Ok, it at least _feels_ new.  I don't recall seeing packages rejected
> for this until very recently.  More strictly enforced?


If one were to analyze the packages submitted in the last 6 months
(SUBMITTED, not only accepted), one might find an odd peak in the
frequency of things containing /usr/local in the last month or so.
Dont know why, it just happens sometimes


>> The only thing that has changed, is that now I guess the pre-release
>> examination tools have gotten better at picking it up. Or perhaps
>> more at discriminating between [this is in a doc file, but That is
>> not].
>
> Did you change this recently then?  Are you using new tools?

The only real change I made in my (cswutils version) checkpkg, was by
maintainer request; to have it call out which files have /usr/local in
them.
However, it still detects "does this package have /usr/local in it?"
the exact same way it's been doing for quite a few years now.


> Again, I don't think the point of this is that what you're saying is
> wrong, although I think you could argue that anything in share/doc is
> fair game for an exclusion at the maintainers discretion.  What I'm
> hearing is that people perceive this as a 'new rule' whether or not
> you feel that it's new.

This should not be about "feelings". It is really inappropriate to say,
"well, some people *feel* like this is new, so even though facts say
it's not new at all, lets ignore facts and go with peoples *feelings*"

This goes back to blastwave days, for goodness's sake.


> Using the recent perl release as an example, it turned out to be a
> harmless reference.

but it isnt "harmless". its just "very very rarely used".
If someone were to actually use that functionality, it would be fatal
to the compile(I think), if no change was made.
That is not "harmless".