[Rpm-ecosystem] RFC: Better handling of per distro RPM macros

[Florian Festi]

Hi!

Looking at the pull requests #37 and #38 [1] for a while I came to the
conclusion that RPM macros are quite a mess. But I could not really come
up with a way to get things cleaned up without breaking existing packages.

In general it is clear that distros and possibly even single packages
within distros need control over some RPM macros. The speed of rpm
upstream is just not suited to make quick changes and trying out new
things. Also changes to packaging need to be in sync with the distros
live cycle and updating to a new rpm release should not change how
packages get build.

That's the reason Fedora (as an example) has most of its macros in a
separate package: redhat-rpm-config. I wonder if it made sense to have
an shared git repository where distros (or development packages within
those distros) can share their macro files. Probably with some shared
files on the top level and with per vendor/distro/may be even distro
release sub directories.

For one the would make it much easier to see what other distributions do
or how they solve specific problems. Also it would allow global changes
while keeping the per vendor versions unaffected by pushing the old
behavior down into the vendor files.

Is this something people are interested in? What
layout/features/policies should such a repository have? Does it need
special things like sections for languages like Perl, Python, ... or
features like language sub packages, debuginfo packages, ... ?

Florian

[1] https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpm/pull/37
    https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpm/pull/38
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