Bug 1381082

Summary: %configure does not accept additional arguments
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Roman C <info>
Component: rpmAssignee: Packaging Maintenance Team <packaging-team-maint>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 24CC: ignatenko, kardos.lubos, novyjindrich, packaging-team-maint, pknirsch, pmatilai
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Last Closed: 2016-10-11 13:29:17 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Roman C 2016-10-02 20:41:55 UTC
I am not deeply knowledgeable about rpm packaging, so I apologize if I misunderstand something, but this looks like a bug to me.

In /usr/lib/rpm/macros, the comment for %configure says:

# The configure macro should be invoked as %configure (rather than %{configure})
# because the rest of the arguments will be expanded using %*.

Which seems to suggest that %configure was intended to accept additional arguments and expand them through %*.

However, %* does not occur in the expansion, and the only way to pass the arguments is in fact to invoke it as

  %{configure} --with-something=something

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

rpm-4.13.0-0.rc1.27.fc24.x86_64

Comment 1 Panu Matilainen 2016-10-11 13:17:58 UTC
Um, what exactly is it that you're trying to do that is not working? 
I've yet to see a spec where %{configure} is used in place of %configure and a large percentage of them do pass options to it, such as

%configure --disable-static

As for the comment, it was true when written back in 1999 ... for a period of approximately three days. %configure has not been a parametric macro since then so %* etc dont even enter the picture.

Comment 2 Panu Matilainen 2016-10-11 13:25:22 UTC
That and couple of other ancient (and now invalid) comments removed now, thanks for pointing it out:
https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpm/commit/e03de479bfd2e8759be9bb1019487a6371160f60

Comment 3 Roman C 2016-10-11 13:29:17 UTC
You are right. I thought it didn't work, but now I'm trying to reproduce it, and it works. Thanks.

Comment 4 Panu Matilainen 2016-10-12 04:57:19 UTC
Thanks for confirming. And for pointing out the ancient misleading comment :)