On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 09:48 -0500, Tommy Reynolds wrote:
Uttered Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazquez ivazquez net>, spake thus:
Attached is an outline for a guide to building packages under Fedora, in
notecase format (available in Fedora Extras).
Thank you for participating in the Docs project. I would rather your
outline be an ordinary text file, HTML, OpenOffice, or PDF file and
be readible using anything from the basic Fedora distribution.
Nothing wrong with the Extras tools, but requiring folks to download
a non-standard package to read the outline seems to be a awkward start.
Okay, I went ahead and removed the NoteCase header and renamed the
extension, and ran it through HTML tidy for good measure.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Changelog
2005.08.22: 0.0: Initial proposal (Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams)
Introduction
RPM (RPM Package Manager) is at the heart of Fedora Core. It's responsible for installing new software, as well as tracking files so that the same software can be uninstalled with a minimum of fuss. But RPM on its own doesn't actually do anything. It's up to the packager to specify how a package is built, as well as explaining what sort of files the package contains, and what other packages it relies upon for proper operation.
Structure of a package
Header
This contains things such as the name, version, release, epoch, and architecture the package was built for, as well as what this package requires from other packages and what it provides to other packages.
Files
This contains all files, directories, symlinks, etc. contained in the package, as well as the size, permissions, ownership, and SELinux file context.
Scripts
This contains the scripts to be done on package install and uninstall, as well as the script done during a RPM verify.
Modifying an existing package
(go through the various reasons why one would want to modify an existing package)
Case Study: PHP
(modify the PHP package for adding <capability>)