Right, it's a feature of rpm/kickstart/yum that you can not install anything marked %doc ... and people are using it now more than ever (for containers, etc)

So either patch the code to run without that dir. or don't mark it as %doc.

Ok thanks!

But its not "nothingtodo": the Octave instructions linking above need to be updated as they have incorrect instructions (telling packagers to mark things %doc that should not be).

Can I just do that to the wiki? I thought I saw a comment saying such things have to go through FPC ticket...

Those pages can only be edited by the packaging committee.

Is this a general issue with the octave guidelines? Is it always wrong to mark those files as documentation?

If not, then note that the guidelines can't possibly cover every case and sometimes some package just requires that you do something differently.

If so, then please submit a draft of the changes you believe should be made and we'll add this to the meeting schedule. I think Orion wrote those guidelines originally so perhaps he has something to add.

I just checked: I have no edit buttons on the wiki even when logged into FAS so I guess I cannot just do it.

1. The necessary change is on this page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Octave

This patch needs to be done in two places:

{{{
%{octpkgdir}/*.m
-%doc %{octpkgdir}/doc-cache
+%{octpkgdir}/doc-cache
%{octpkgdir}/packinfo
}}}

1. Adding a note could be good too:

Note, be careful with %doc as "the program must run properly if [that file] is not present" [Packaging:ReviewGuidelines]. In particular, doc-cache, NEWS, DESCRIPTION should not be marked %doc.

(oops our posts crossed I think, sorry).

Is this a general issue with the octave guidelines? Is it always wrong to mark those files as documentation?

Yes I think it is a general issue.

1. Using the package within Octave requires certain files to be present. For NEWS file, there is an Octave command news mypackage which fails without this file installed---I checked.

2. I'm not sure exactly what doc-cache does (I can guess...). In my rough tests the package does seem to be functional without). But at any rate, its not the intended user-facing documentation.

Does it fail catastrophically? Or does it just print an error and continue? If the latter, I believe that things are fine as is. Choosing to not install documentation and then getting an error about trying to access documentation is not really surprising. Having the program simply not work is another thing entirely.

Ok that's a good point.

It doesn't appear to be catastrophic. In fact help myfcn_from_mypackage still seems to work. And as far as I know news mypackage is only used for end users.

So if the meaning of "run properly" in "the program must run properly if it is not present" is relaxed as your describe, then I'm happy enough with resolving this "nothingtodo".

Not sure why this wasn't closed forever ago.