rpmspec: -i: unknown option

[Panu Matilainen]

On 11/29/2012 11:28 PM, David Abdurachmanov wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have updated from RPM 4.8.X to 4.10.1.
>
> My scripts used to get not yet build package information with the following command:
>
> rpm -qi --specfile /build/tmp/tmpspec-gcc --define "A 1" --define "B 1"
>
> It worked fine on 4.8.X, yet with 4.10.1, I get the following error:
>
> rpmspec: -i: unknown option
>
> Yet doing:
>
> rpm -q --info --specfile /build/tmp/tmpspec-gcc --define "A 1" --define "B 1"
>
> works on 4.10.1 and 4.8.X
>
> According to the man page:
>
> .SS "query-options"
> .PP
>
>
>   [\fB--changelog\fR] [\fB-c,--configfiles\fR] [\fB--conflicts\fR]
>   [\fB-d,--docfiles\fR] [\fB--dump\fR] [\fB--filesbypkg\fR] [\fB-i,--info\fR]
>
> --info === -i
>
> Could someone explain why the behavior has changed?

It's (unintentional) fallout from splitting out the spec query 
functionality to the new 'rpmspec' utility in rpm >= 4.9.x:

a) splitting it allowed eliminating librpmbuild dependency from the main 
rpm executable
b) splitting it gives a whole lot of freedom to add spec-specific 
switches, the main rpm executable is already severely overloaded with 
them, and some of the switches are overloaded too: for example '-i' 
stands for both --install and --info depending on context.

rpmspec knows neither -i or --info as the output isn't particularly 
useful with half the fields non-populated. That it happens to work with 
'rpm -q --specfile --info' is because --info is popt alias for a 
specific --queryformat but -i can't be handled like that as it is 
overloaded and popt doesn't know the context.

If that sounds like a hysteric pile of historical goo... that's exactly 
what it is, and some/much of it is not really fixable. I'd recommend 
using 'rpmspec' directly for all specfile queries on versions that have 
it, 'rpmspec' can be easily extended but the --specfile switch to main 
rpm executable can not, and is likely to be dropped entirely at some 
point in the future.

	- Panu -