[Rpm-maint] [rpm-software-management/rpm] RFE: option for initial-only content in files (#152)

Panu Matilainen notifications at github.com
Wed Apr 12 10:04:53 UTC 2017


Thinking about it some more... what we're actually talking about here is a file update policy. An update policy is a selection of operations such as whether to replace modied files or not, to backup or not etc. When looking at it from this perspective, it all starts making more sense: %config is merely a *name* for a particular selection of such operations, aka policy, not a feature in itself, and this new thing is not a parallel feature to %config, but another update policy which partially overlaps with %config. 

So implementation-wise, rpm internals need a bit of generalization (what a surprise) before proceeding. And of course it needs a name too, but for starters %updatepolicy(...)  will do, better suggestions welcome. After that, %config can be made into an actual macro that emits a matching %updatepolicy, and maybe by that time we've come up with a couple of other policies common enough that they deserve a name in style of %config. %ghost related to this too, but its roots are deeper since the data is omitted from the payload entirely.

As for the behavior the actual RFE, I suspect there are cases where a packager *really* wants just the initial content, never to be touched by rpm again. So that needs to be an option along the "update until modified" variant. I guess.

Then there's the question of legacy compatibility, all this should be retrofitted in a manner that makes older rpm versions not implementing the new thing to do something relatively sane. Adding an rpmlib() dependency on this would be like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.

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