Bug 2365811 - cron daemons need to support alternative crontab binary and Provides: cron
Summary: cron daemons need to support alternative crontab binary and Provides: cron
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: cronie
Version: 42
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ondřej Pohořelský
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 2350109
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-05-13 06:50 UTC by Pramod V U
Modified: 2025-05-15 18:24 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description Pramod V U 2025-05-13 06:50:36 UTC
Cron packages, like cronie, need to add `Provides: cron` (and `Provides: anacron` as needed) to themselves.

AND packages like "crontabs" need to `Requires: cron` rather than a specific implementation like cronie.

This allows any cron implementation to be installed on fedora, without hacks like `Provides: cronie` in alternate packages.

This would allow seamless interchanging of various cron implementations...

Additionally, the "crontab" binary needs to be interchangeable via "update-alternatives".

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
No specific steps... It's a package metadata issue.
Actual Results:
- Alternate cron implementations need to either re-implement the entire "crontabs" package or if they depend on it need to `Provides: cronie` in order to avoid pulling the redundant cronie daemon, which if running may re-run the crobjobs which are already taken care of by the alternate implementations.
- `crontab` binary is different across implementations, and conflicts when multiple cron impelmentations are to be installed... Any implementation has to depend on "crontabs" which depends on cronie, and there is a conflict with the alternate implementation of `crontab` binary.

Expected Results:
- Installing any alternate cron implementation should be seamlessly supported as anything needing cron has `Requires: cron`. Without hacks or needing to account for other specific implementations.
- "crontab" binary should be interchangeable via "update-alternatives".

Additional Information:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2350109

This is a cron implementation which is a systemd generator rather a traditional cron daemon; It generates systemd service-timer unit pairs for each cronjob, which systemd runs.

Trying to package this, in a clean way such that it is interchangeable and drop-in replacement to cronie, the problem becomes apparent.


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