Building RPMs from tarballs

[Zach Frey <zfrey bright net>]

OK, not strictly a GNOME question ...

How *does* one build an RPM from a tarball. I've seen the
suggestion "just rpm -ta <tarball>.gz", but either (a) this
is busted with gnome-core-0.99.5.1.tar.gz, or (b) there's
something unstated here that is key to making it work.

I have tried two methods now, neither of which give me a .rpm
file or an installed RPM.

(1)  Download foo.tar.gz
     rpm -ta foo.tar.gz

(2)  Download foo.tar.gz
     tar xovfz foo.tar.gz
     cd foo
     ./configure
     make
     make dist
     rpm -ta foo.tar.gz

Could some kind soul give me a hint here?  Is the output of a
'rpm -ta ...' command supposed to be a .rpm file, or an installed RPM?
Neither the man page nor the FAQ on RPM shed much light on this for me,
I'm afraid ...



Thanks in advance,


Zach