What does the || : in this line of bash script from an rpm spec file do?

Question

ln -s /var/log/$SERVICE_NAME $RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX/logs || :

In the rpm spec file every line ends with || :

What is the

Answer 1

It swallows the exit code.

|| does the thing after it if the thing before it fails (i.e., has a non-zero exit code). : is the “do nothing” command. Put them together…