[Fontconfig] conf.avail, rpmlint and the FHS

[Behdad Esfahbod]

I'm fine with this change.  Next fontconfig release should happen sometime
this winter I guess.  I'll make this change in my tree that I will then make
available to Keith for review and release.

behdad

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Ping?
> 
> Le dimanche 26 octobre 2008 à 21:30 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot a écrit :
>> Hi all,
>>
>> When conf.avail was introduced in fontconfig we at Fedora mostly ignored
>> it and let font packages install their fontconfig rules directly in
>> conf.d
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/FontsSpecTemplate
>> (the exception being the fontconfig package itself who perforce followed
>> the new conventions).
>>
>> Recent events made me revisit this point and try to heal the rift
>> between fontconfig and font packages by following common conventions.
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Fonts_spec_template_correction_(fontconfig)
>>
>> In the course of the examination of this guideline change proposal,
>> however, it was identified that conf.avail as currently designed causes
>> our rpmlint package sanity check tool to emit errors. Those errors were
>> ok for Behdad to ignore, but really not ok for general packaging
>> guidelines we want to put into newbie packager hands.
>>
>> The core reason are that since we deploy policy through those fontconfig
>> files, we absolutely do not want users to change them (they're free to
>> un-reference the files in conf.d, or write their own fontconfig rules in
>> different files, but we instruct rpm to stomp on old versions of our
>> files on updates). Since we mark those files as non-modifiable (%config
>> and not %config(noreplace) in rpm speak) rpmlint considers them as data,
>> not configuration, and complains of their location under /etc.
>>
>> After thinking a bit about it I feel rpmlint is right — since we don't
>> let users modify our fontconfig files they're not dynamic configuration,
>> just static data users can choose to activate or not.
>>
>> We could of course add an exception in rpmlint just for conf.avail, but
>> I'd rather have fontconfig be fixed to follow more closely the FHS.
>> Exceptions ultimately pile on till you have a lot of cruft to clean up
>> which is not my definition of fun.
>>
>> Can conf.avail and its contents be moved in /usr/share/something in the
>> next version of fontconfig?
>>
>> See also:
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Minutes/20081021
>>
>> Regards,
>>