Is extracting files on %post when installing an RPM a good practice?

Question

I'm creating an RPM to distribute a conda environment and I came up with this solution:

I was able to do it. Here's my .spec file from a Stackexchange answer.

Summarizing: I use the install phase to just unpack the dependencies and the installation script and in %post I run that script, which is creating files under /opt/miniconda. Due to this, I need to specify manually the steps to clean the environment when uninstalling and also check manually if everything is working correctly.

Is this a good practice? I'd like to be able to do everything in the install phase so the installation could be aborted if something goes bad but I wasn't able to achieve this.

Answer 1

It is very bad practice.

Few pointers:

Instead of:

if [ -f /opt/miniconda/bin/python ]; then
    echo "Python is there!"
    echo "Checking version..."

    python_version="$(/opt/miniconda/bin/python --version)"
    if [[ "3.6.0" =~ "$python_version" ]]; then

You should put either

Requires: python >= 3.6.0

If system python is enough for you, or if you create RPM with your own python then something like:

Requires: miniconda-python >= 3.6.0

Similary for all those modules.

It seems to me that you do not know the difference between %install and %post. So please read https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34631942/how-to-run-and-interact-with-a-script-from-within-an-rpm/34634718#34634718 Do all the move part in %install and you do not need %post part at all.