On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 10:48 +1000, John Pye wrote: > I'm new to this list although I've been building RPMs for a little while > now. I have finally decided it's time to build my RPMs as a user other > than root -- to try to work out the problems that I previously had with > that. I do wonder if we should make rpmbuild *refuse* to run as root. > The first problem is that according to 'Maximum RPM' I should be able to > add a ~/.rpmrc file containing just "topdir:/home/buildbot/rpmbuild", > and, so long as I have created the required directories (mkdir > ~/rpmbuild && cd ~/rpmbuild && mkdir SPECS SOURCES RPMS SRPMS BUILD), > then I should be able to just run 'rpmbuild' and it should all work. It > doesn't: I get a complaint about the 'topdir' line in my .rpmrc being > invalid. This is on FC5 with rpm-4.4.2-15.2. Maximum RPM is really rather dated now. > I found that the only way to build RPMs off-root was to use the > suggested .rpmmacros to replace %_topdir with something else. There was > a nice little download script on the RPM webpage that looked after all > that. But it seems that the manual needs to be updated to explain if/why > the .rpmrc approach isn't working, and whether or not that's a > Fedora-only issue, or what. Best thing is probably to get the Fedora RPM Development Tools - see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/fedora-rpmdevtools fedora-buildrpmtree sets things up for you. An alternative is (strangely) the cpan2rpm command/package - cpan2rpm --mk-rpm-dirs sets things up for you > Next, my off-root RPM build fails due to 'install -o root -g root' > commands. What is the suggested why to have RPMs built for correct root > installation if you're not able to use the 'install -o' command during > the build? Is that where the %defattr stuff comes into play? Should I > not use 'install -o' in RPMs? Don't set the owner in the %install phase, but instead use a combination of %defattr for the overall attributes setting, and %attr for specific file/directory attribute setting. > Finally, my trickiest problem. I have an RPM spec file as shown below > that results in a dependency on '/usr/bin/perl5'. I don't have this on > my system, so I want to trace back where the dependency is coming from. > I suspect that the 'update-mime-database' command in my %pre and %post > could be responsible -- how can I check that? Just do a find /my/source/dir -type f -print | xargs fgrep /usr/bin/perl5 and see what you get. The thing like that that catches me out sometimes is examples in the package documentation that get swept up and including in the %doc file set. If any of those are executable they will be included in the deps checking - so an executable perl script which starts #!/usr/bin/perl5 will cause that dep. Solution is to chmod the file to 444. Reading the stuff on the Fedora Extras wiki is worth doing - even if you never intend to submit packages to Extras or even use Fedora. Start at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines If you are packaging stuff that is going to be put on any other machine I would strongly recommend using a proper build environment, which makes sure that things aren't just building because you happen to have a file in a particular place on your box... it makes things reproducible. The Fedora Extras favoured one appears to be Mock:- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/MockTricks http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock Personally I use mach - which I find more efficient since it does not rebuild the build environment every time. [However I do wonder if we should get something with a happy medium - saves the clean build environment as a archive, and reinstates that each time] Mach is at http://thomas.apestaart.org/projects/mach/ and is also packaged within Fedora Extras and some other environments. Nigel. -- [ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] [ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ] _______________________________________________ Rpm-list mailing list Rpm-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rpm-list
