Hello packagers,
I have problems interpreting Packaging Guidelines section File and Directory Ownership [1] for icons application place in %{_datadir}/icons/hicolor. I ran into this during package review for dosbox-x [2], but I think the issue is more general than that, because many applications add their icons to the (default, fallback) hicolor theme.
So the package places application's icon to %{_datadir}/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/dosbox-x.svg. From the guidelines, it is clear that for all directories in the chain, one of the following has to be true:
1. Package owns the directory 2. A dependency package owns the directory 3. _filesystem_, _man_ or "other explicitly created -filesystem package" own the directory
Item 3 takes care of %{_datadir}/icons part, because that is included in _filesystem_. The remainder hicolor/scalable/apps is unclear for me. Method 1 could be used. But there is also package _hicolor-icon-theme_. Is that package an "explicitly created -filesystem package", so method 3 could be used? That would feel natural, because hicolor is the fallback theme that must exist according to freedesktop.org specification.
Related but separate question about the guidelines: Section Unowned Directories:Inaccessible Directories [3] discusses a problem that is only relevant to Fedora < 9 and RHEL < 5.3. It does not really contain any information that is relevant today. Should that section simply be removed?
Otto
[1]: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#_file_and_directo... [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1919639 [3]: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/UnownedDirectories...