Re: Installing source rpm, RH8.0

["Michael A. Peters" <mpeters mac com>]

A source rpm makes no entries to the rpm database, so rpm -q won't
display anything.

I have NO CLUE why Red Hat doesn't do this by default (they should) but
you don't want to install src.rpm's as root (or build them as root).

create a directory in your home directory called rpm
Within that directory put the necessary subdirectories:

rpm/SPECS
rpm/BUILD
rpm/SOURCES
rpm/SRPMS
rpm/RPMS/[i386,i486,i586,i686,athlon,noarch]
rpm/tmp

once those are created - create a file in your home directory called
.rpmmacros and put the following in it:

%_topdir    /home/you_user_name/rpm
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp

That way - you can install src.rpm's and build rpm's without being root,
which is much safer to your system - especially if you are learning how
to program and messing with creating rpm's yourself.

On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 03:15, Greg Stewart wrote:
> I've installed RH psyche in order to learn how to program on linux, and I've
> been trying to install source code, particularly that for vim.
> 
> Running:
> 
> rpm -i -v vim-6.1-14.src.rpm (as root from the package dir) prints out
> 
> vim-6.1-14
> 
> but     rpm -q -v vim-6.1-14     indicates the package isn't installed. All
> that happens is that about 100 patch and tar.gz files etc are created in
> /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/.
> 
> It's as if some script was supposed to be run to amalgamate them and
> doesn't. Trying to install using redhat-config-packages doesn't do much
> better, except that an rpm -q will indicate the package installed - the
> files in /SOURCES/ remain the same unusable bunch...
> 
> The machine isn't internet connected so I can't just download source willy
> nilly from the web. Any pointers would be very useful.
-- 
Michael A. Peters <mpeters mac com>