Bug 1506655

Summary:	autoconf contains a config file under /usr
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Michal Schmidt <mschmidt>
Component:	autoconf	Assignee:	Pavel Raiskup <praiskup>
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	27	CC:	karsten, kasal, praiskup, ttomecek
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Clones:	1506935 (view as bug list)		Environment:
Last Closed:	2017-10-27 08:20:50 UTC	Type:	Bug
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Bug Blocks:	1506935

Description Michal Schmidt 2017-10-26 13:52:13 UTC

Description of problem:
The autoconf package ships a file under /usr marked as a config file. This is against the Fedora Packaging Guidelines[1]:
  Don't use %config or %config(noreplace) under /usr. /usr is deemed to not
  contain configuration files in Fedora. 

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Configuration_files

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
autoconf-2.69-25.fc27.noarch

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. rpm -qc autoconf
2.
3.

Actual results:
/usr/share/config.site

Expected results:
No file under /usr should be listed.

Comment 1 Pavel Raiskup 2017-10-26 14:11:35 UTC

Hi Michal, thanks for the report.

The thing is that config.site is configuration file, to some extent.  Solution
would be to drop the %config attribute?  I tend to ack this, even though I'm
glad that `rpm -qc autoconf` gives the "hint".

Why is this actually problem?  I'm asking because you are asking for
compromise...  Yes, PackagingGuidelines mention the /usr && %config advice,
but the statement seems to be rather vague:

  Don't use %config or %config(noreplace) under /usr. /usr is deemed to not
  contain configuration files in Fedora.

While I would expect something like:

  Packages *can not* install ... under /usr.

Is this about share-able /usr mountpoint?  What issues existence of the file
actually causes?

Comment 2 Michal Schmidt 2017-10-26 14:57:53 UTC

Hi Pavel,

> The thing is that config.site is configuration file, to some extent. 
> Solution would be to drop the %config attribute?

Yes.

> I tend to ack this, even though I'm
> glad that `rpm -qc autoconf` gives the "hint".
> Why is this actually problem?

It's not that anything is broken by the file being marked as %config.
I want people to get used to not editing files under /usr. A hint that there's a config file under /usr goes against that idea.

> Is this about share-able /usr mountpoint?

I was thinking more of systems using rpm-ostree, but sure, a sharable /usr mount is nice.
Again, it's not outright broken. It just may lead people in a wrong direction.

Comment 3 Pavel Raiskup 2017-10-27 08:20:50 UTC

Ack.

FTR, configure accepts also also /usr/etc/config.site, but that's still
under /usr.  Should be fixed upstream so that --sysconfdir affects the
"user-configurable" location.

I'm removing %config attribute (the noreplace argument was not used
anyways, so the configuration file was replaced with updates anyways).

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/autoconf/c/0e943051ba402fa58f3c6f0087a1d615de584fb1?branch=master