In my opinon, easier/safer to just add
Requires: hicolor-icon-theme

(if nothing else in your stack of dependencies pulls it in)

Thanks.

Guidelines are not clean here, so let's reopen it for some volunteer to propose guidelines change.

I'm trying to understand the issue here. The referenced guideline relates to whether a package should own a directory and has no relation to dependencies, so it's not where you would go to find an answer to the question which is posed.

The relevant guideline, I think, is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Package_dependencies and after reading it I think it could use some work in general. It does seem covers all of the cases explicitly except the case of directory dependencies.

I would lean towards just changing "File Dependencies" to "File and Directory Dependencies" and updating the text of that section to reference "files and directories" as appropriate.

A quick draft of the above is at https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ATibbs%2FPackageDependencies&diff=latest&oldid=486668

We discussed this at this weeks meeting (http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2017-02-23/fpc.2017-02-23-17.00.txt):

• 632 Requires: hicolor-icon-theme or own dir (geppetto, 18:01:15)
• ACTION: Directory deps. wording added/updated. (+1:6, 0:0, -1:0)
  (geppetto, 18:19:08)

Written up. Announcement text:

The main guidelines section on file dependencies was amended to include information about directory dependencies, including a rule against depending on a directory in order to bring in any files or package functionality.

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#File_and_Directory_Dependencies
• https://pagure.io/packaging-committee/issue/632