Description of problem: The references I can find are in: /usr/share/systemtap/testsuite/systemtap.exelib/exelib.exp Reading that, it says: # Only use prelink if it exists on this platform set prelink_bin "/usr/sbin/prelink" if {[file exists $prelink_bin]} { set libprelink_opts {no yes} } else { set libprelink_opts {no} } If I'm reading it correctly, it appears like this doesn't need to be a hard dependency. Am I missing something? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): systemtap-testsuite-2.3-1.fc19, presumably later versions How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. look for runtime or build dependencies on prelink Actual results: Found one!
Bill, why do you think this is a problem? As long as prelink is available in the distro (even if non-default), the systemtap testsuite tries to assert our continued compatibility with it. Since systemtap-testuite isn't (and shouldn't be) in the comps as a default part of the install, what's the problem with it depending on another non-default part?
My understanding of this bug is that we need to remove the systemtap-testsuite rpm's requirement of prelink in the spec file.
(In reply to David Smith from comment #2) > My understanding of this bug is that we need to remove the > systemtap-testsuite rpm's requirement of prelink in the spec file. No please. Why would we do that? The testsuite depends on prelink to be able to test some issues. Yes, it will also run if prelink isn't available, but that means not all tests are ran. I really do want our tests to run fully by default (using prelink in the testsuite makes sure we are testing certain ELF file manipulations that might happen - even without prelink installed - on the user machine). BTW. The testsuite prelink Requires is already only for those arches that provide that package.
Requirement of prelink would lead to installation of prelink, which would lead to prelink being fully operational on the machine in question. (That is something that can be fixed in prelink, of course.) I just wanted to clarify what the relationship dependency was, if the code itself implied it was optional.
The systemtap-testsuite package is unlikely to be installed by casual users, or ones who would be unable to clean up things like undesireable prelinkedness afterwards. IMHO this is not worth changing on the systemtap end until/unless prelink is removed entirely (which would be a shame).