The RPM Packet Manager is a frequently used tool for software configuration management on UNIX based systems, especially Linux based systems. In contrast to Windows based installers and also to the DEBIAN packaging system, the RPM Packet Manager is intended to be used to create source- and binary distributions of packages being available as source code. Typical application includes

  • get a software system as source code
  • apply changes as patches for a particular environment
  • compile everything together<
  • create a binary and source code distribution from it to supply it to the particular community

If you want to create a binary distribution of some executables an configuration files only, the standard RPM way requires some effort.

In this article we describe how to create a binary-only distribution with little effort.

Getting started - create and install binaries

On UNIX we are using "make" to compile and install our software. To build RPM distributions we retain this practive. Therefore our makefiles for UNIX include a install section, e.g.:

install: $(SYSNAME)/$(CFG)/$(BINARY) $(SHARED_LIB) $(CONFIG_FILE)
  install -m 755 $(SYSNAME)/$(CFG)/$(BINARY) /opt/target/bin/$(BINARY)
  install -m 755 $(SHARED_LIB) /opt/target/bin/$(SHARED_LIB)
  install -m 644 $(CONFIG_FILE) /opt/target/etc/$(CONFIG_FILE)

After you are ready with compilation you should install the software ("make install"). rpmbuild will create the binary package from these files.

Next step - create the environment

There is one important rule the reader should take in mind always - never run rpmbuild as root. This might end up in an empty root directory sooner as the reader might expect. Therefore the first configuration step to use rpmbuild should always be to create a suitable environment in normal user space. We are using the "sandbox" folder in our "Projects" tree for this purpose:

cd ~
mkdir -p Projects/sandbox
cd Projects/sandbox
mkdir SPECS
mkdir SOURCES
mkdir BUILD
mkdir RPMS
mkdir SRPMS

Afterwards we create the file .rpmmacros in our home directory:

cd ~
vi .rpmmacros

After the editor launched, please enter the following text according to local environment constraints:

%_topdir                /home/$user/Projects/sandbox
%_builddir              %{{_topdir}}/BUILD
%_rpmdir                %{{_topdir}}/RPMS
%_sourcedir             %{{_topdir}}/SOURCES
%_specdir               %{{_topdir}}/SPECS
%_srcrpmdir             %{{_topdir}}/SRPMS

Basically you are through. What still is missing, is .spec file.

Pre-final - the spec file

rpmbuild needs a .spec file to build a .rpm file. Create such a spec file in your project directory (where the makefile is residing). A minimal example is given below:

Summary: Key info on software
Name: name-of-the-package
Version: 1.2.3.4
Release: 1
Copyright: Copyright info
Group: Applications/System


%description
Brief description of software package.

%prep

%build

%install

%clean

%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
%doc

/opt/target/bin/programfile
/opt/target/bin/libshared.so
/opt/target/etc/config.cfg

%changelog

Please adapt the contents of this file to your particular needs, especially the filenames section (starting with /opt/target).

Final - get the binary RPM<

After the .spec file was created (let's assume it was named specfile.spec) rpmbuild can be used to create binary distribution:

rpmbuild -bb specfile.spec

Afterwards you should find the binary RPM package in the particular architecture folder in %_rpmdir.