On Thu, 2006-03-02 at 14:07 -0500, M. Lewis wrote: > Stuart Sears wrote: > > On Thursday 02 March 2006 01:00, M. Lewis decided we wanted to hear the > > following: > >> Thanks Taharka. Had I ever created an rpm, that would probably be a good > >> solution. Unfortunately I haven't and I didn't see any instructions > >> there for doing so. If you have a pointer to some instructions that > >> would be helpful. > > the instructions are at (nearly) the same location as the rpm... > > http://www.fedoranews.org/tchung/thunderbird/ > > including the source files you need to create your rpm. > > > > but in brief... > > This all applies to a user called 'stuart'. You'll need to adjust it for a > > *non-privileged* user on your system. Do NOT build rpms as the 'root' user. > > you can also use a directory name other than REDHAT. that's just what I tend > > to use. The other directory names (SPECS etc) are not customisable without a > > greate deal of messing about. > > > > 1. create a file in your home directory called .rpmmacros > > it should contain: > > %_topdir /home/stuart/REDHAT > > > > 2. now create a basic build tree > > mkdir -p /home/stuart/REDHAT/{RPMS,SRPMS,SOURCES,BUILD,SPECS} > > > > 3. put everything in place: > > put the thunderbird.spec file into /home/stuart/REDHAT/SPECS > > cp the 3 source files thunderbird-1.5.tar.gz, thunderbird.png and > > thunderbird.desktop into /home/stuart/REDHAT/SOURCES > > > > 4. now use the thunderbird.spec file to build the rpm: > > rpmbuild -bb /home/stuart/REDHAT/SPECS/thunderbird.spec > > > > which, if all goes well, should create loads of output and then eventually > > write the file > > /home/stuart/REDHAT/RPMS/i386/thunderbird-1.5-1.i386.rpm > > > > ps setting up the build environment as in steps 1 and 2 above can also be done > > by using yum to install a development-specific rpm. > > yum install fedora-rpmdevtools > > and then fedora-buildrpmtree > > I've just always done this manually... > > Regards > > > > Stuart > > > > Very cool. Thanks Stuart. One question, why do not build the rpm as the > root user? Mainly for protection against poorly-written specfiles and Makefiles, which could end up clobbering bits of your system if you build packages as root. By building packages as a regular user, you won't be overwriting any files that you don't have write permission for. It's even worth considering creating a separate account just for package-building. Paul.
