Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
The idea behind having %license (and packages actually using it) is that now we have the licenses identified and stored in a way that RPM controls, instead of simply stored the same way that documentation is stored.
Making RPM do smarter things with those license files is now entirely within the domain of RPM or perhaps some file triggers or even (ugh) a cron job/timer/whatever.
So, want to hardlink those files? Have a package with a file trigger on /usr/share/licenses that runs /usr/sbin/hardlink. Instant space savings, though you still have to spend the inodes. If that's not enough, RPM could probably be taught to do practically anything.
If there were a common-licenses package, then perhaps RPMbuild could automatically compare files tagged with %license to those licenses, and replace matching files with a link and a dependency on common-licenses? That should also make the packages smaller, saving some download time and space on the mirrors.
I can't take on any more work so the idea is free for the taking.
Björn Persson