Installed files¶
Installation of small files¶
- PG:
0301
- Source:
QA
- Reported:
no
Ebuilds must not introduce USE flags to control installing files that are small in size, require no additional dependencies and not cause any negative consequences to the program behavior by being installed. Such files must be installed unconditionally. Examples include shell completion files, systemd service units, localization files.
Users wishing to strip unnecessary files of this category should use INSTALL_MASK to do so.
Rationale: the goal of this policy is to avoid unnecessary rebuilds of packages when the cost of installing additional files is much smaller than the cost of rebuild. It has been specifically brought in context of bash completions in LibreOffice – a user who did not notice that he did not enable the flag should not be required to spend hours rebuilding such a huge package in order to install one tiny file.
Note
While technically e.g. app-shells/bash-completion could be
considered a dependency of installed bash completions, it is not
applicable here since this package needs to be installed by the user
if he wishes to use completions in the first place, and if it is not
installed, completion files are not used at all.
Installation of static libraries¶
- PG:
0302
- Source:
QA
- Reported:
no
Packages must not install static libraries unless they are explicitly
required, either by themselves or their reverse dependencies. If both
shared and static libraries are supported, shared libraries must be
installed by default and USE=static-libs may be added for static
libraries if they are necessary.
Rationale: static linking is strongly discouraged as it makes security support for packages practically impossible. It may be used whenever really necessary (e.g. for recovery tools) but otherwise proliferating it is considered harmful. There is no point in installing static libraries if they are never going to be used.
Note
If the package’s build system does not support disabling static
library build, it is recommended to patch it and submit the patch
upstream. However, if that is not feasible and building both shared
and static libraries does not require compiling source files twice,
it is acceptable to strip static libraries in src_install().
Installation of libtool (.la) files¶
- PG:
0303
- Source:
QA
- Reported:
no
Packages must not install libtool .la files unless they are explicitly required. Generally, they might be required if:
the package is using a plugin loader that requires .la files in order to locate plugins and does not have .so fallback (very uncommon),
the package is installing static libraries that have additional dependencies and no pkg-config files or other tools that provide the list of dependencies to build systems.
It is recommended to use the following one-liner to remove .la files:
find "${ED}" -type f -name '*.la' -delete || die
Rationale: libtool files were historically introduced as an attempt to supplement static library archives with dependent library list. However, they were only supported by libtool-based (autotools) projects and caused many issues, in particular due to hardcoding full paths. Today they are practically replaced by more portable pkg-config files, and while libtool keeps generating them, they are considered unnecessary and potentially harmful.
Virtuals¶
- PG:
0304
- Source:
QA
- Reported:
no
Packages in the virtual category must not install any files.
Rationale: The virtual category is reserved for packages with
an empty installation image. Package managers rely on this for some
optimizations. Also QA tools make certain assumptions about virtuals,
e.g., that they must not assign the LICENSE variable (which would
be impossible if they installed any files).
Installation of manpages¶
- PG:
0305
- Source:
QA
- Reported:
no
Packages must not disable installing manpages via USE flags (e.g.
USE=man or USE=doc). If upstream does not ship prebuilt
manpages and building them requires additional dependencies,
the maintainer should build them and ship along with the package.
Rationale: Manpages are basic documentation for installed software. While additional dependencies are inconvenient for users, not building manpages is harmful. Including (optionally or unconditionally) prebuilt manpages is a good compromise.