Re: Building an RPM w/o specifying source

[Tim Johnson - Hillsboro <tim_johnson credence com>]

I am planning a binary only install and I am using RPM.  The goods news that
because you are not using much of the functionality provided by RPM your spec
files can be very simple.

The internal build of the product is performed outside of RPM. Because the
result of the build is a directory structure that is the same as I expect on
the customer's machine, the install section is very simple:

%install
#nothing

%files
%{prefix}/stow/bin/foo
%{prefix}/stow/lib/foo.so

The I don't have to worry about the R/W/O permissions as they are specified in
the %files section with the %defattr() directive. This allows me to full
advantage of RPM on the customers machine for dependency checks, installation,
query & verification. Be sure to reference all files with a prefix so the
installation destination can be specified at install time. There are a few
more issues that you will need to work out but this is basically it.

Although the time to build some of my larger packages (approx. 200MEG) was
quite long (20-30 mins) the installs on customers machines (the important
part) was very fast (1-2 mins).



Erik Williamson wrote:

> Hi -
>
> This'll be easy I'm sure.  I want to build an rpm of preexisting
> binaries and manpages, without specifying or including the source (
> which I don't have ).  Basically, it's a glorified tarball.   Anyways,
> when doing a 'rpm -ba <myspecfile>' rpm complains about the 'Source:' line.
>
> Which is understandable - because I haven't included any source, nor do
> I want to compile anything.  I saw that there's a --tarbuild option in
> the man pages, but there's no explanation of it, and rpm ( 4.0.2-7 )
> complains about it being an unknown option.
>
> Any ideas?  Should I suck it up and go with a tarball anyhow?
>
> Thanks,
> Erik.
>
> --
> e r i k   w i l l i a m s o n                     erik@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
>   system admin . department of computer science . university of calgary
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rpm-list mailing list
> Rpm-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rpm-list

--
Tim Johnson
Credence Systems Corporation
Email:  tim_johnson@credence.com
Phone:  (503) 466-7403
FAX:    (503) 466-7232