6. Building RPMs

Contents of this section

Building RPMs is fairly easy to do, especially if you can get the software you are trying to package to build on its own.

The basic procedure to build an RPM is as follows:

• Make sure your /etc/rpmrc is setup for your system.
• Get the source code you are building the RPM for to build on your system.
• Make a patch of any changes you had to make to the sources to get them to build properly.
• Make a spec file for the package.
• Make sure everything is in its proper place.
• Build the package using RPM.

Under normal operation, RPM builds both binary and source packages.

6.1 The rpmrc File

Right now, the only configuration of RPM is available via the /etc/rpmrc file. An example one looks like:

require_vendor: 1
distribution: I roll my own!
require_distribution: 1
topdir: /usr/src/me
vendor: Mickiesoft
packager:  Mickeysoft Packaging Account <packages@mickiesoft.com>

optflags: i386 -O2 -m486 -fno-strength-reduce
optflags: alpha -O2
optflags: sparc -O2

signature: pgp
pgp_name: Mickeysoft Packaging Account
pgp_path: /home/packages/.pgp

tmppath: /usr/tmp

The require_vendor line causes RPM to require that it find a vendor line. This can come from the /etc/rpmrc or from the header of the spec file itself. To turn this off, change the number to 0. The same holds true for the require_distribution and require_group lines.

The next line is the distribution line. You can define that here or later in the header of the spec file. When building for a particular distribution, it's a good idea to make sure this line is correct, even though it is not required. The vendor line works much the same way, but can be anything (ie. Joe's Software and Rock Music Emporium).

RPM also now has support for building packages on multiple architectures. The rpmrc file can hold an ``optflags'' variable for building things that require architecture specific flags when building. See later sections for how to use this variable.

In addition to the above macros, there are several more. You can use:

rpm --showrc

6.2 The Spec File

We'll begin with discussion of the spec file. Spec files are required to build a package. The spec file is a description of the software along with instructions on how to build it and a file list for all the binaries that get installed.

You'll want to name your spec file according to a standard convention. It should be the package name-dash-version number-dash-release number-dot-spec.

Here is a small spec file (vim-3.0-1.spec):

Summary: ejects ejectable media and controls auto ejection
Name: eject
Version: 1.4
Release: 3
Copyright: GPL
Group: Utilities/System
Source: sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/utils/disk-management/eject-1.4.tar.gz
Patch: eject-1.4-make.patch
Patch1: eject-1.4-jaz.patch
%description
This program allows the user to eject media that is autoejecting like
CD-ROMs, Jaz and Zip drives, and floppy drives on SPARC machines.

%prep
%setup
%patch -p1
%patch1 -p1

%build
make RPM_OPT_FLAGS="$RPM_OPT_FLAGS"

%install
install -s -m 755 -o 0 -g 0 eject /usr/bin/eject
install -m 644 -o 0 -g 0 eject.1 /usr/man/man1

%files
%doc README COPYING ChangeLog

/usr/bin/eject
/usr/man/man1/eject.1

6.3 The Header

The header has some standard fields in it that you need to fill in. There are a few caveats as well. The fields must be filled in as follows:

• Summary: This is a one line description of the package.
• Name: This must be the name string from the rpm filename you plan to use.
• Version: This must be the version string from the rpm filename you plan to use.
• Release: This is the release number for a package of the same version (ie. if we make a package and find it to be slightly broken and need to make it again, the next package would be release number 2).
• Icon: This is the name of the icon file for use by other high level installation tools (like Red Hat's ``glint''). It must be a gif and resides in the SOURCES directory.
• Source: This line points at the HOME location of the pristine source file. It is used if you ever want to get the source again or check for newer versions. Caveat: The filename in this line MUST match the filename you have on your own system (ie. don't download the source file and change its name). You can also specify more than one source file using lines like:

  Source0: blah-0.tar.gz
  Source1: blah-1.tar.gz
  Source2: fooblah.tar.gz
  

  These files would go in the SOURCES directory. (The directory structure is discussed in a later section, "The Source Directory Tree".)
• Patch: This is the place you can find the patch if you need to download it again. Caveat: The filename here must match the one you use when you make YOUR patch. You may also want to note that you can have multiple patch files much as you can have multiple sources. ] You would have something like:

  Patch0: blah-0.patch
  Patch1: blah-1.patch
  Patch2: fooblah.patch
  

  These files would go in the SOURCES directory.
• Copyright: This line tells how a package is copyrighted. You should use something like GPL, BSD, MIT, public domain, distributable, or commercial.
• BuildRoot: This line allows you to specify a directory as the ``root'' for building and installing the new package. You can use this to help test your package before having it installed on your machine.
• Group: This line is used to tell high level installation programs (such as Red Hat's ``glint'') where to place this particular program in its hierarchical structure. The group tree currently looks something like this:

  Applications
      Communications
      Editors
          Emacs
      Engineering
      Spreadsheets
      Databases
      Graphics
      Networking
      Mail
      Math
      News
      Publishing
          TeX
  Base
      Kernel
  Utilities
      Archiving
      Console
      File
      System
      Terminal
      Text
  Daemons
  Documentation
  X11
      XFree86
          Servers
      Applications
          Graphics
          Networking
      Games
          Strategy
          Video
      Amusements
      Utilities
      Libraries
      Window Managers
  Libraries
  Networking
      Admin
      Daemons
      News
      Utilities
  Development
      Debuggers
      Libraries
          Libc
      Languages
          Fortran
          Tcl
      Building
      Version Control
      Tools
  Shells
  Games
  

• %description It's not really a header item, but should be described with the rest of the header. You need one description tag per package and/or subpackage. This is a multi-line field that should be used to give a comprehensive description of the package.

6.4 Prep

This is the second section in the spec file. It is used to get the sources ready to build. Here you need to do anything necessary to get the sources patched and setup like they need to be setup to do a make.

One thing to note: Each of these sections is really just a place to execute shell scripts. You could simply make an sh script and put it after the %prep tag to unpack and patch your sources. We have made macros to aid in this, however.

The first of these macros is the %setup macro. In its simplest form (no command line options), it simply unpacks the sources and cd's into the source directory. It also takes the following options:

• -n name will set the name of the build directory to the listed name. The default is $NAME-$VERSION. Other possibilities include $NAME, ${NAME}${VERSION}, or whatever the main tar file uses. (Please note that these ``$'' variables are not real variables available within the spec file. They are really just used here in place of a sample name. You need to use the real name and version in your package, not a variable.)
• -c will create and cd to the named directory before doing the untar.
• -b # will untar Source# before cd'ing into the directory (and this makes no sense with -c so don't do it). This is only useful with multiple source files.
• -a # will untar Source# after cd'ing into the directory.
• -T This option overrides the default action of untarring the Source and requires a -b 0 or -a 0 to get the main source file untarred. You need this when there are secondary sources.
• -D Do not delete the directory before unpacking. This is only useful where you have more than one setup macro. It should only be used in setup macros after the first one (but never in the first one).

The next of the available macros is the %patch macro. This macro helps automate the process of applying patches to the sources. It takes several options, listed below:

• # will apply Patch# as the patch file.
• -p # specifies the number of directories to strip for the patch(1) command.
• -P The default action is to apply Patch (or Patch0). This flag inhibits the default action and will require a 0 to get the main source file untarred. This option is useful in a second (or later) %patch macro that required a different number than the first macro.
• You can also do %patch# instead of doing the real command: %patch # -P

That should be all the macros you need. After you have those right, you can also do any other setup you need to do via sh type scripting. Anything you include up until the %build macro (discussed in the next section) is executed via sh. Look at the example above for the types of things you might want to do here.

6.5 Build

There aren't really any macros for this section. You should just put any commands here that you would need to use to build the software once you had untarred the source, patched it, and cd'ed into the directory. This is just another set of commands passed to sh, so any legal sh commands can go here (including comments). Your current working directory is reset in each of these sections to the toplevel of the source directory, so keep that in mind. You can cd into subdirectories if necessary.

6.6 Install

There aren't really any macros here, either. You basically just want to put whatever commands here that are necessary to install. If you have make install available to you in the package you are building, put that here. If not, you can either patch the makefile for a make install and just do a make install here, or you can hand install them here with sh commands. You can consider your current directory to be the toplevel of the source directory.

6.7 Optional pre and post Install/Uninstall Scripts

You can put scripts in that get run before and after the installation and uninstallation of binary packages. A main reason for this is to do things like run ldconfig after installing or removing packages that contain shared libraries. The macros for each of the scripts is as follows:

• %pre is the macro to do pre-install scripts.
• %post is the macro to do post-install scripts.
• %preun is the macro to do pre-uninstall scripts.
• %postun is the macro to do post-uninstall scripts.

The contents of these sections should just be any sh style script, though you do not need the #!/bin/sh.

6.8 Files

• This section's assertion that it is impossible to use find is the original author's view, and is incorrect from a technical possibility point of view. Clearly chrooted builds can do so and are safe, within the limits of the packager's skill; that and some other approaches will will work with find.
• Some developers try to use tools only in /, /usr, and /sbin, particularly with respect to commands appearing in pre- and post- install scripts.
• Thanks to Rob Nagler for pointing out the stale assertion.
-- RPH 020510


This is the section where you must list the files for the binary package. RPM has no way to know what binaries get installed as a result of make install. There is NO way to do this. Some have suggested doing a find before and after the package install. With a multiuser system, this is unacceptable as other files may be created during a package building process that have nothing to do with the package itself.

There are some macros available to do some special things as well. They are listed and described here:

• %doc is used to mark documentation in the source package that you want installed in a binary install. The documents will be installed in /usr/doc/$NAME-$VERSION-$RELEASE. You can list multiple documents on the command line with this macro, or you can list them all separately using a macro for each of them.
• %config is used to mark configuration files in a package. This includes files like sendmail.cf, passwd, etc. If you later uninstall a package containing config files, any unchanged files will be removed and any changed files will get moved to their old name with a .rpmsave appended to the filename. You can list multiple files with this macro as well.
• %dir marks a single directory in a file list to be included as being owned by a package. By default, if you list a directory name WITHOUT a %dir macro, EVERYTHING in that directory is included in the file list and later installed as part of that package.
• %files -f <filename> will allow you to list your files in some arbitrary file within the build directory of the sources. This is nice in cases where you have a package that can build it's own filelist. You then just include that filelist here and you don't have to specifically list the files.

The biggest caveat in the file list is listing directories. If you list /usr/bin by accident, your binary package will contain every file in /usr/bin on your system.

6.9 Building It

The Source Directory Tree

The first thing you need is a properly configured build tree. This is configurable using the /etc/rpmrc file. Most people will just use /usr/src.

You may need to create the following directories to make a build tree:

• BUILD is the directory where all building occurs by RPM. You don't have to do your test building anywhere in particular, but this is where RPM will do it's building.
• SOURCES is the directory where you should put your original source tar files and your patches. This is where RPM will look by default.
• SPECS is the directory where all spec files should go.
• RPMS is where RPM will put all binary RPMs when built.
• SRPMS is where all source RPMs will be put.

Test Building

The first thing you'll probably want to to is get the source to build cleanly without using RPM. To do this, unpack the sources, and change the directory name to $NAME.orig. Then unpack the source again. Use this source to build from. Go into the source directory and follow the instructions to build it. If you have to edit things, you'll need a patch. Once you get it to build, clean the source directory. Make sure and remove any files that get made from a configure script. Then cd back out of the source directory to its parent. Then you'll do something like:

        diff -uNr dirname.orig dirname > ../SOURCES/dirname-linux.patch

This will create a patch for you that you can use in your spec file. Note that the ``linux'' that you see in the patch name is just an identifier. You might want to use something more descriptive like ``config'' or ``bugs'' to describe why you had to make a patch. It's also a good idea to look at the patch file you are creating before using it to make sure no binaries were included by accident.

Generating the File List

Now that you have source that will build and you know how to do it, build it and install it. Look at the output of the install sequence and build your file list from that to use in the spec file. We usually build the spec file in parallel with all of these steps. You can create the initial one and fill in the easy parts, and then fill in the other steps as you go.

Building the Package with RPM

Once you have a spec file, you are ready to try and build your package. The most useful way to do it is with a command like the following:

        rpm -ba foobar-1.0.spec

There are other options useful with the -b switch as well:

• p means just run the prep section of the specfile.
• l is a list check that does some checks on %files.
• c do a prep and compile. This is useful when you are unsure of whether your source will build at all. It seems useless because you might want to just keep playing with the source itself until it builds and then start using RPM, but once you become accustomed to using RPM you will find instances when you will use it.
• i do a prep, compile, and install.
• b prep, compile, install, and build a binary package only.
• a build it all (both source and binary packages).
There are several modifiers to the -b switch. They are as follows:
• --short-circuit will skip straight to a specified stage (can only be used with c and i).
• --clean removes the build tree when done.
• --keep-temps will keep all the temp files and scripts that were made in /tmp. You can actually see what files were created in /tmp using the -v option.
• --test does not execute any real stages, but does keep-temp.

6.10 Testing It

Once you have a source and binary rpm for your package, you need to test it. The easiest and best way is to use a totally different machine from the one you are building on to test. After all, you've just done a lot of make install's on your own machine, so it should be installed fairly well.

You can do an rpm -u packagename on the package to test, but that can be deceiving because in building the package, you did a make install. If you left something out of your file list, it will not get uninstalled. You'll then reinstall the binary package and your system will be complete again, but your rpm still isn't. Make sure and keep in mind that just because you do a rpm -ba package, most people installing your package will just be doing the rpm -i package. Make sure you don't do anything in the build or install sections that will need to be done when the binaries are installed by themselves.

6.11 What to do with your new RPMs

Once you've made your own RPM of something (assuming its something that hasn't already been RPM'ed), you can contribute your work to others (also assuming you RPM'ed something freely distributable). To do so, you'll want to upload it to ftp.redhat.com .

6.12 What Now?

Please see the above sections on Testing and What to do with new RPMs. We want all the RPMs available we can get, and we want them to be good RPMs. Please take the time to test them well, and then take the time to upload them for everyone's benefit. Also, please make sure you are only uploading freely available software. Commercial software and shareware should not be uploaded unless they have a copyright expressly stating that this is allowed. This includes Netscape software, ssh, pgp, etc.

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