%exclude /non/existent/file fails a build needlessly.

[Jeff Johnson]

SSIA

[Per Øyvind Karlsen (proyvind)]

This is perfectly sane behaviour IMO, %exclude only having the purpose of excluding file from package and not from unpackaged files check is more explicit. Removing files in %install is sufficient and should help avoid ambiguity and possible packaging mistakes by using %exclude.

For rpm in Mandriva Linux, matching behaviour was recently reintroduced in rpm-4.6.1-1.

[Jeff Johnson (n3npq)]

Sane is always in the eye of the beholder.

Why should a directive that specifies that a file should not be included
_FAIL_ when the file is indeed not included? So that the directive can be removed?

There are _ALWAYS_ two extremes in expectations:

[Jeff Johnson (n3npq)]

(continued)
    FULLSTOP on any deviation from what is specified
    BESTEFFORT continue in spite of deviations

In the case of %exclude, I think BESTEFFORT is the better choice. Clearly
someone specified that a file should not be included. And if the file isn't
present at all, that does conform to "expectations" imho.