[Rpm-maint] [rpm-software-management/rpm] Add %optional tag (#417)

[Jeff Johnson]

Counter contrarian examples of the uselessness of %optional:

0) There are _NO_ arch specific include files in Fedora/Centos after a fair amount of effort to patch all include files to be arch-independent way back when (like RHEL5 time frame). Being able to copy trees from /usr/include without worrying about deletions/additions is mostly desirable.

1) Using %ifarch -- while verbose and clunky -- at least identifies what is intended to be within a package on different architectures, unlike %optional, which requires a deeper analysis.

2) RPM has always permitted the semantic of "all files within" if a directory is mentioned, and it's rather trivial to write the pattern that matches an arch specific include without the %optional artifact. See e.g. the many many packages that have patterns like %{_libdir}/lib*.so.* or %{_mandir}/man*/* without any need for %optional.

3) Specific to language specific sub-packages, the usual locales are located on paths that include the same country code that requires other logic to determine which sub packages are to be built, and which have an easily matched language specific pattern to match included paths in the %files manifest.

Would you like to perhaps present a sounder usage case for %optional than you have already?

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