On Fri, Apr 03, 2020 at 02:23:12PM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> Fabio Valenti made this comment in the FESCo ticket[1].
> 
> "Side note: I think more people would be amenable to including
> "conditionals" into their packages if they weren't only shown off as
> `%if eln this else that`. I think there's more value in doing "feature
> flags" rather than conditionalize everything based on the `dist` tag,
> for example something like this might even be useful in fedora
> branches (e.g. for bootstrapping):
> 
> ```spec
> # at the top of the .spec file, where it's easily visible
> %if 0%{?eln}
> %bcond_with docs
> %else
> %bconf_without docs
> %endif
> 
> # ...
> 
> %if %{with docs}
> # do something
> %endif
> ```
> 
> This makes conditionals (when they are necessary) much easier to
> maintain (and understand), in my experience."

This is a side topic, and I didn't want to clutter the FESCo ticket
with that. But here we have threads, so I hope that you'll forgive me ;)

If find the %bcond_with/%bcond_without pattern abhorrent.

1. The logic is reversed: when I see "with" I think something is enabled,
   when I see "without" I think something is disabled. But it's actually
   the other way around here, which I find very confusing and often get
   the condition reversed on the first try.

2. The value ('0%{?eln}') in this example is expressed before the name
   ('docs'), which is like saying 'value =: name'. 

3. It takes five (!) lines to express the something that should be one
   line.

So... could we please get a way to express this in rpm with a sane syntax:

%define_cond docs 0%{?fedora} > 0

(Naming and details of syntax are just examples, but the important
parts are: one line, name before value, positive logic).

Zbyszek
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