Generic Macros and Conditions

Always ship sources and patches

RPM packages should always ship all sources and patches to all distributions.

In RPM .spec files, it is possible to create a construction like:

%if 0%{?suse_version}
Source1:        extra-source.for.suse
Patch1:         patch.for.suse
%endif

These lines describe what to include in the source RPM, and should therefore be avoided (as files may get excluded).

Instead, use:

Source1:        extra-source.for.suse
Patch1:         patch.for.suse
(...)
%prep
%setup
%if 0%{?suse_version}
%{__install} -p -m 644 %{SOURCE1} some/where
%patch1 -p1
%endif

Define whether the system uses systemd or sysvinit

Use %{suse_version} and %{rhel} to determine whether systemd or SysVinit is in use.

Note

All openSUSE versions supported use systemd, and all Fedora versions supported use systemd. This means that for as far as RPM packaging goes, basically only %{rhel} < 7 does not use systemd.

%if 0%{?suse_version} < 1 && 0%{?fedora} < 1 && 0%{?rhel} < 7
%global with_systemd 0
%else
%global with_systemd 1
%endif

Note that the SysVinit to systemd change also affects the dependencies:

%if 0%{?with_systemd}
%if 0%{?suse_version}
Requires(post):     systemd
Requires(postun):   systemd
Requires(preun):    systemd
%else
Requires(post):     systemd-units
Requires(postun):   systemd-units
Requires(preun):    coreutils
Requires(preun):    systemd-units
%endif
%else
Requires(post):     chkconfig
Requires(post):     initscripts
Requires(postun):   initscripts
Requires(preun):    chkconfig
Requires(preun):    initscripts
%endif