[Rpm-maint] [rpm-software-management/rpm] RFE: support isolation between %prep/%build/%install/%check (Issue #3050)

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

> %install should run with a read-only build directory

I don't think this is going to work. E.g. autotoolz-based systems (something in the autotools, automake, libconf stack) do final preparation steps in the install target. I think this is inelegant, but not really "wrong". Old meson versions had a buglet in the i18n module where the po file would be generated not during build but during installation. But more widely, tools write installation logs into the build directory. Meson does, I think various Python tools do (pip?), etc. Anything that gives an "uninstall" command needs to put the information somewhere.

> %check should run with read-only buildroot to prevent tests from affecting packaged content.

People were asking about this a lot in #3010. My motivation for this: build hygiene and reproducibility. The `%check` section is optional and can be skipped with `--nocheck` or `--without tests`. The result of a build that skipped checks should be identical, which would break if anything in `%check` touches `%{buildroot}`. If `%{buildroot}` is made readonly, we know that we can skip checks safely and save time. For example, when doing build reproducibility checks, I'd skip tests, because we're not interested in their result at all, but we can do that safely only if we are sure that they don't influence package contents.

> It probably does need writable build-dir because those tests do need to write someplace

And same with install: I have seen various sources generate stuff needed for tests in check targets, not build. In summary, I think that in practice all phases must be given write access to the build directory.

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