On Tue, Jun 30, 2026, at 13:18, Michal Schorm wrote:
> Daniel's count summary was interesting to me, here's some more:
>
> %{?rhel} ~ 1750
> %{?fedora} ~ 1750
> %{?flatpak} ~ 120
> %{?suse_version} ~ 95
> %{?bootstrap} ~ 85
> %{?epel} ~54
> %{?centos} ~ 24
> %{?eln} ~ 16
> %{?_module_build} ~ 10
> %{?mageia} ~ 6
> %{?snap} ~ 5
> %{?is_opensuse} ~ 4
> %{?sle_version} ~ 4
> %{?amzn} ~ 1 (condor.spec)
> %{?ubuntu} ~ 1 (tlog.spec)
> %{?debian} ~ 1 (tlog.spec)
> %{?container_build} ~ 1
>
>
> %{?el10} ~ 12
> %{?el9} ~ 31
> %{?el8} ~ 57
> %{?el7} ~ 51
> %{?el6} ~ 21
> %{?el5} ~ 11
>
>
> In my view, the value of the "SPECfile macro jungle" that makes
> maintenance easier for me - the person who interacts with that SPEC
> the most - is higher than the price occasional visitors with access
> pay. *But* I'm biased by being the maintainer of the packages I do the
> vast majority of the work on.
>
>
> What I always wondered about, when visiting other packages, was *why*
> there is a macro jungle.
The biggest reason I have dealt with was that the main maintainer just wants
one spec file versus N ones slightly different. They may be also using this
outside of Fedora in multiple places because they do this for their job and we
get the freebie of having the code work.
And so sometimes I have had to add RHEL macros for EPEl and other times I have
had to keep some out of date tag for RHEL 4 because the maintainer said they
still built it for their companies or university critical system.
> And I always received different answers for different packages from
> different maintainers, based on their own preferences regarding how
> important, for example, RHEL 5 SPECfile compatibility is to them, etc.
> Before making any restrictive decisions, I would *love* to hear from
> all these people about their reasons and justifications: why that
> system is best for them, or what prevents them from cleaning it up. I
> am genuinely interested.
>
> Without that, I'm afraid, we'll only tell each other "I interact with
> SPECfiles in this way, so let's require others to format SPECs so it's
> easiest for *me* to work with them".
>
> --
>
> Michal Schorm
> Senior Software Engineer
> Databases Team
> Red Hat
>
> --
>
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--
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Ian MacClaren
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