Re: Fetching and building dependencies automatically

[Dario Alcocer <alcocer helixdigital com>]

Brian Candler wrote:
> I have an RPM building question. I'm familiar with writing spec files and
> building RPMs from them, and I can build individual packages just fine.
>
> The target systems where these packages will be run are RHEL4, and we have a
> satellite server, so distributing those packages is easy.
>
> However, I am looking for a way to automate the building of packages. The
> goal is to have a fully repeatable package build where I start with a single
> .spec file, type one command, and the package is built, installing and/or
> building dependencies as necessary. Then, when I need a new version of this
> package in 6 months' time, I can just update the spec file and issue one
> command again.
>
> rpmbuild by itself doesn't do this. It can't download the source files from
> the URLs in the spec file, and just aborts if BuildRequires packages are not
> present.
>   
I'm not sure if this suggestion is "overkill" for what you require, but 
have you looked at the tools that the Fedora Core folks use?

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Plague 

Plague is a distributed package build system, suitable for building a 
whole Linux distribution (like Fedora Core), or for building additional 
packages (like Fedora Extras). It currently uses other programs like 
yum, mock, and createrepo to power much of the buildroot setup, rebuild, 
and repository management process.

-- D.