On Sat, 2024-05-11 at 01:04 +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
Florian Festi wrote:
We have an even easier solution for you: You can just run the script at [3] with -n on your own spec files to get them changed to the %patch N variant. If you do that right now they will not break nor will they be touched during the mass change.
As I said the %patch -PN syntax is the one with the best compatibility - reaching back into the dark ages. I am not advocating for people to use it. Anyone is free and encouraged to move to something more modern - before or after the change. We are using this variant so spec files continue to work on older distributions and the chance of breakage is minimized. This way packagers that don't care don't have to.
What I do not understand is why RPM is discontinuing the most commonly used syntax and breaking hundreds of specfiles. This also leaves us with only the choice between a backwards-incompatible syntax (added only in RPM 4.18) and an ugly and redundantly verbose syntax (the -P syntax). And even the modern syntax is 1 character (space) longer for every patch. The shortest syntax was the one being dropped.
The shortest syntax is just to use Patch: foo.patch , and %autosetup . Much easier on merge requests, too.