Re: building packages from binaries

[Tim Mooney <mooney dogbert cc ndsu NoDak edu>]

In regard to: building packages from binaries, Anshuman Kanwar said (at...:

>I am trying to build packages from a tree of precompiled binaries. I just
>want to plunk down the binaries in a known location and generate some
>configuration using rpm. I don't need to compile source and hence do not
>need the src.rpm package. Does anyone have instructions on how to do this ?

As Liguo Song suggested, this is very easy to do.  This type of question
has been asked and answered several times on the RPM list, but I'm not
sure how searchable the list is.

In any case, if the binaries are already in place, in the layout you would
like on the system where you do packaging, then you just need to create
a spec file with the preamble that has the basics like Name:, Version:,
Release:, etc., and a %description section that describes your package.
You may or may not need to list at least one "Source:", if so try
something like:

	Source: /tmp/NO-SOURCE-NEEDED

and then run

	touch /tmp/NO-SOURCE-NEEDED

before you create your package.  Source: may not even be needed, in which
case it should be left out of your spec file.

The next four parts of the spec file, which are generally the "hard
parts", will be trivial for you:

%prep
# Nothing to prepare, we're packaging prebuilt binaries
exit 0

%build
# Nothing to build, the binaries already exist
exit 0

%install
# Nothing to install, the binaries are already arranged as we would like
# them.
exit 0

%clean
# Nothing to clean, as we didn't prep or build anything.
exit 0


All that's left for you to do is create a `%files' section that lists what
files are in the package, and run

	rpmbuild -bb yourspec

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                              mooney@dogbert.cc.ndsu.NoDak.edu
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