#240 Add a criteria for a general multilib exemption
Closed: Fixed None Opened 11 years ago by toshio.

In https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/222#comment:9 we okayed a multilib exemption policy which allows arch-specific data to be placed in %{_prefix}/lib. The exact wording requires an okay from fesco because we were worried that people might not understand what made a package validly multilib exempt. In the FESCo meeting and in subsequent discussion on the mailing list, notting suggested that binaries that would ordinarily have gone into %{_libexecdir} should always be safe to be multilib exempt (as %{_libexecdir} is itself a non-multilib location).

I propose this new wording (btw, all of this should go in a new section of Packaging:Guidelines#Filesystem_Layout that directly follows #libexecdir) :

== Multilib exempt locations ==

If a package is exempt from multilib, it may use %{_prefix}/lib instead of %{_libdir}. Helper binaries that would ordinarily be installed into %{_libexecdir} are always multilib exempt but you must be sure the (sub)package they're in does not have
other, multilib content. If this is not the case for the files you wish to do this in for your package or you are just unsure, ask FESCo for an explicit multilib exemption.


-1

The proposal to me reads a playing it nice to mal-designed applications and their poor packaging habits.

IMO, we should do the converse and enforce such packages to change their "bad practices", such that these "bad practices" will gradually die out.

If a package is exempt from multilib, it may use %{_prefix}/lib instead of %{_libdir}. Packages that contain architecture specific files that would ordinarily be installed into %{_libexecdir} are always considered ineligible for multilib. However, you should be sure that the (sub)package that they are in does not have other content that would be considered eligible for multilib. If this is not the case for the files you wish to do this in for your package or you are just unsure, ask FESCo for an explicit multilib exemption.

Approved (+1:6, 0:0, -1:1)

Written up, about to be announced.

Metadata Update from @corsepiu:
- Issue assigned to spot

7 years ago

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