Creating an RPM Package

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Hello Again Readers,

WARNING: All tasks performed in this post must NOT be done as the root user.

This post will discuss my experiences on creating an RPM Package based on the tarballs (packages) from my previous post -- gnupg-1.4.11 & wdiff-0.6.5, also including a step by step procedure on how I was successful.

Before beginning an RPM build you need to ensure you have the following installed; Fedora Packager (yum groupinstall "Fedora Packager"), this will automatically install rpmlint.

Note: yum-utils came pre-installed for me on Fedora 14 after performing a system update using the "yum update" command.

After the necessary packages were installed we then need to build the required RPM tree structure where RPM packaging will take place this can be done by using the "rpmdev-setuptree" command. This command will create the following directory structure;

[root@gcasella-fc14 ~]$ tree rpmbuild/
rpmbuild/
├── BUILD
├── RPMS
├── SOURCES
├── SPECS
└── SRPMS

Next I will provide the necessary commands and expected output to successfully build an RPM Package.


Step 1: I placed the source (.tar.gz) files into the ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/ directory.

Step 2: Changed my current working directory to the ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/ directory and create a new spec file using the rpmdev-newspec <filename>.

Step 3: For the purpose of this post I will show a sample spec file that I had used for my gnupg-1.4.11.tar.gz RPM build. (The spec file can be found here http://fpaste.org/w9kr/)

Step 4: When the spec file was configured properly I ran the rpmbuild -ba <spec-filename> and waited for the build to complete. (Note: Some builds may take longer than others)

Step 5: If the build returned with no errors you should be able navigate to the ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/ and ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/ directories and find your two newly created RPM Packages.

Step 6: I then tested my newly created RPM Packages by using the rpmlint  command on each of the following;

rpmlint ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/<spec-filename>
rpmlint ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/<new-RPM-package.rpm>
rpmlint ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/<new-SRPM-package.src.rpm>

Note: The rpmlint command will show any errors/warnings that may be needed to fix before releasing.


Problems While Building

The only real problem I ran into while Building an RPM Package was during the actual build I would be told that a specific directory would not exist. I then noticed the "Name" and "Version" values MUST be the same as the name and version of the package. For example, if you use the gnupg-1.4.11.tar.gz package your spec file must contain the two pieces of data within the meta-data.

Name: gnupg

Version: 1.4.11

This was the only error that I've encountered throughout my attempts to build an RPM Package.


Where To Find My Files! 
gnupg-1.4.11 Files

RPM
SRPM

wdiff-0.6.5 Files

RPM

SRPM

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Gian-Luca Casella -- Last Updated on Wednesday January 26th, 2011