RPM HOWTO

RPM at Idle

Donnie Barnes

Red Hat, Inc.

    djb@redhat.com
  

Revision History
Revision V3.03 November 1999

Table of Contents
Introduction
Overview
General Information
Acquiring RPM
RPM Requirements
Using RPM
Now what can I really do with RPM?
Building RPMs
The Spec File
The Header
Prep
Build
Install
Cleaning your system
Optional pre and post Install/Uninstall Scripts
Files
Changelog
Building It
The Source Directory Tree
Test Building
Generating the File List
Building the Package with RPM
Testing It
What to do with your new RPMs
What Now?
Multi-architectural RPM Building
Sample spec File
Optflags
Macros
Excluding Architectures from Packages
Finishing Up

Introduction

RPM is the RPM Package Manager. It is an open packaging system available for anyone to use. It allows users to take source code for new software and package it into source and binary form such that binaries can be easily installed and tracked and source can be rebuilt easily. It also maintains a database of all packages and their files that can be used for verifying packages and querying for information about files and/or packages.

Red Hat, Inc. encourages other distribution vendors to take the time to look at RPM and use it for their own distributions. RPM is quite flexible and easy to use, though it provides the base for a very extensive system. It is also completely open and available, though we would appreciate bug reports and fixes. Permission is granted to use and distribute RPM royalty free under the GPL.

More complete documentation is available on RPM in the book by Ed Bailey, Maximum RPM. That book is available for download or purchase at www.redhat.com.