[Techtalk] RPM proceedures & practices

[Hamster]

Hi,

> Who doesn't?  ;-)  I love RPM, but to a point!  Is there someone who has
> a solid grasp of what we can do with RPM that can not only answer
> Andrew's question (rebuilding to work on your system), but give us a
> primer as well?  Like, I know we're supposed to be able to take tarballs
> and build them into RPMs, but how do you do that?  What's the anatomy of
> an RPM file?  What are some obscure but helpful options?

If you really want to have a look inside an rpm, then download a utility called
rpm2tar

This converts any rpm into a tar ball, which you can simply untar. That way you
can have a look at the contents of an rpm, its spec file and all the
interesting bits and pieces.

If you want the full picture, the document Maximum
RPM (http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/) gives you pretty much all there is to know.

If you want to know about converting tarballs to rpms, another good source is
the developers section of your rpm based distro. Mandrake at least has a
document about how to contribute to the distro, and part of that includes how
to make Mandrake type rpms.

Hamster