A bug in an rpm spec

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#1

A few days ago I decided that I wanted to watch for when new versions of various programs came out. This would be trivial to do, since it would just require checking the last updated time of the html page that links to the download of the software (provided it is not dynamically generated.) I decided to search for a program in yast before trying to write my own. I found specto, whose description reads as follows:


% zypper info specto
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

Information for package specto:
-------------------------------
Repository: main
Name: specto
Version: 0.4.1-2.1.3
Arch: noarch
Vendor: openSUSE
Installed: Yes
Status: up-to-date
Installed Size: 1.1 MiB
Summary: Unobtrusive update notifier
Description: 
Specto is a desktop application that will watch any user-specified events (web, folder, ...). This will allow users, for instance, to specify a website to watch, and Specto will automatically check for updates on the web page. It will then notify the user when there is activity. This will allow the user to be informed of new updates/events instead of having to look out for them.

% rpm -q -d specto
/usr/share/doc/packages/specto/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/packages/specto/COPYING

So I, finding that the docs for specto were scarce, decided to run specto -h, can you guess what I got out?


% specto -h
Usage:
  specto [OPTION...] - GStreamer initialization

Help Options:
  -h, --help                        Show help options
  --help-all                        Show all help options
  --help-gst                        Show GStreamer Options

Now, I don’t think I need to point out that gstreamer is an audio program and has nothing to do with the intranet (except, perhaps, to send audio across it.) Moreover, there is no place for a url in that syntax definition.

So, is it just me, or is this a different kinda bug?

#2

On 2014-05-17 20:46, ballsystemlord wrote:

> So, is it just me, or is this a different kinda bug?

Try:


rpm -qf `which specto`

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

#3 
% rpm -qf `which specto`
specto-0.4.1-2.1.3.noarch
#4

I don’t understand why your thread title it ‘A bug in an rpm spec’. Is it supposed to read '‘A bug in an rpm specto’? Anyway…

There are more ways to find documentation that ‘rpm -qd’.

You could look at the specto website


mike@continuity7:~$ rpm -qi specto| grep URL
URL         : http://specto.sourceforge.net/
mike@continuity7:~$

Also you could run specto and select Help > Help.

My guess would be the mention of gstreamer in the output is somehow due to it having python-gstreamer-0_10 as a dependency and the lack of any useful information about command line options due to there not being any.

#5

I called it a bug in an rpm spec because the help the program gave was towards the end of initializing gstreamer, not monitoring websites. This is either a bug in the spec (mislabeled program,) or the program is giving me the help of a different program, which, at least in my humble opinion is a definite no-no (does gcc print out the help for stty?) Their website does not have a documentation page as far as I can see, so I can’t say whether this is a desired behavior or not. Now that I know what’s up I’ll file a bug report with them.

#6

No, I can’t do that either. They require a google id and I don’t have one and I don’t want one as google tracks you. Perhaps somebody else could do this.