glibc currently ships tools such as getent and iconv which could be used by applications, without providing /usr/bin/getent and /usr/bin/iconv. This means that packagers who want to make explicit the dependency on these tools cannot currently do so.
$ LANG=C.utf8 dnf install /usr/bin/iconv Package glibc-common-2.27-19.fc28.x86_64 is already installed, skipping. Dependencies resolved. Nothing to do. Complete!
(In reply to Miro Hrončok from comment #1) > $ LANG=C.utf8 dnf install /usr/bin/iconv > Package glibc-common-2.27-19.fc28.x86_64 is already installed, skipping. > Dependencies resolved. > Nothing to do. > Complete! But: $ rpm -q --provides glibc-common config(glibc-common) = 2.26-28.fc27 glibc-common = 2.26-28.fc27 glibc-common(x86-64) = 2.26-28.fc27 So if a package requires /usr/bin/iconv, that can only be satisfied via the filelist file, which we generally avoid downloading, at least for the initial installation.
(In reply to Florian Weimer from comment #2) > which we generally avoid downloading, at least for the > initial installation. Not sure about the initial installation, but DNF always downloads file lists no matter what [1]. And AFAIK, the /usr/bin files are part of the metadata, not part of the file list anyway. [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=968006
Why not to use BuildRequires: /usr/bin/iconv?
(In reply to Igor Gnatenko from comment #4) > Why not to use BuildRequires: /usr/bin/iconv? My understanding is that the packaging guidelines strongly recommend avoiding pure file dependencies: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#File_and_Directory_Dependencies
Whatever is in - *bin/* - /etc/* Should be perfectly fine. https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv/blob/75d03059cdaf7770d2217fafaba6af732cd860ba/src/repodata.c#L1274-L1286
(In reply to Igor Gnatenko from comment #6) > Whatever is in > - *bin/* > - /etc/* > > Should be perfectly fine. > > https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv/blob/ > 75d03059cdaf7770d2217fafaba6af732cd860ba/src/repodata.c#L1274-L1286 Oh. Can we please put this into the packaging guidelines, if such dependencies are indeed acceptable?
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> Oh. Can we please put this into the packaging guidelines, if such dependencies are indeed acceptable? That is already in for some time: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#_file_and_directory_dependencies