Hi David,
> > (I think under debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a
> > "suggested" installation, not a requirement.)
>
> I don't know of a good way to do that in a Fedora RPM spec. I don't
> consider mentioning it in the rpm description to be "good".
I've been poking about. Here's some links and extracts from them.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Effect_of_the_UsrMove_Fedora_Feature
Things that history has placed into /bin, /sbin, /lib, or /lib64
should be listed in the %files section as being in those
directories.
So it's reasonable that Fedora's vim package recently moved /bin/vi to
/usr/bin; it's far too big for /bin. :-)
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Weak_dependencies
Weak dependencies (Recommends:, Suggests:, Supplements: and
Enhances:) MAY be used to specify relationships between packages
which are less strict than mandatory requirements.
Weak dependencies are a recentish addition to RPM specs AIUI.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:WeakDependencies
Weak dependencies should be used where possible to minimize the
installation for reasonable use cases, especially for building
virtual machines or containers that have a single purpose only and
do not require the full feature set of the package.
`where possible'. nmh is readily usable without a text editor, e.g. for
incoming mail filtering, so I don't think it should be a Requires.
Looking at https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nmh/blob/master/f/nmh.spec
I'd say /usr/sbin/sendmail, libcurl, and w3m are similarly weak?
An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi? I think
the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'. I expect it's a bunch
of different sized vim-based packages.
Package cronie provides crontab(1) that F27's
https://manned.org/crontab/b340cf46 says uses $VISUAL, then $EDITOR, for
`-e' but I don't see a dependency for an editor, weak or otherwise, in
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/cronie/blob/master/f/cronie.spec. I
suspect other editor-using packages also ignore this. I don't think
Fedora has a generic feature package like `text-editor' that multiple
editor packages can satisfy; certainly
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/ed/blob/master/f/ed.spec doesn't seem
to provide it.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
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