Re: Building RPMs from tarballs

[Zach Frey <zfrey bright net>]

James Henstridge wrote:
> 
> When you do "rpm -ta tarfile.tar.gz", rpm extracts the first .spec file
> from the archive and puts it in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS and puts the archive
> in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES.  It then calls "rpm -ba" on this spec file.
> If the version number is wrong in the spec file, it won't be able to find
> the archive properly (because different versions of a package have
> different names), so the build fails.
> 
> You are better off doing this first bit yourself (maybe use mc to poke
> around in the archive).  Then check the spec file to make sure the version
> is correct.  Most GNOME packages use a macro to specify the version up the
> top so this is pretty easy to do.  Then call rpm -ba on it.  If you get
> any errors, see if you can find where the bug is, fix it and send a note
> to the author through bugs.gnome.org.

After the 'rpm -ba something.spec' command, what is the expected result?
The man page says "Build binary and source packages".  I *think* this
means
that I'm supposed to have two .rpm files after 'rpm -ba ...' has
completed.
Is my understanding correct?

I do not seem to be getting either (a) a .rpm file or (b) an installed
RPM
per 'rpm -qa | grep <name>' after doing 'rpm -ba foo.spec'.  Am I doing
something wrong, or is this a bug I should report?


Zach