Questa è una guida pratica sulla costruzione dei pacchetti RPM, mostra rapidamente come creare dei semplici pacchetti software sorgente e binari. Si presume di possedere una certa disinvoltura nell'uso dei pacchetti precompilati e con il processo d costruzione di software FOSS.
Per informazioni complete su come creare file RPM inclusi suggirimenti dettagliati, fare riferimento alla pagina How to create an RPM package/it. Se si intende creare un pacchetto RPM per i repository Fedora, seguire il processo su come far parte dei manutentori del Fedora Package Collection seguendone le varie indicazioni.
Questo tutorial mostra la pacchettizzazione del progetto GNU "Hello World". Sebbene sia banale ottenere un printing della dicitura "Hello World", la versione GNU contiene contiene la maggior parte dei componenti usuali associati ad un tipico progetto di software FOSS, includendo configuration/build/install, documentazione, internazionalizzazione, etc. Lo stesso comunque consiste tradizionalmente in un file .tar contenente il codice sorgente e gli script configure/make, ma non include informazioni sulla pacchettizzazione. E' utile per far pratica con la costruzione degli RPM.
Ambiente di sviluppo
Per costruire gli RPM servono degli strumenti di sviluppo. Si tratta di una configurazione da fare una sola volta e consiste in un'installazione attraverso i seguenti comandi dati come amministratore di sistema (root
):
# yum install @development-tools # yum install fedora-packager
Se si preferisce testare la procedura di costruzione in una root dedicata, bisogna configurare il proprio utente come membro del guppo mock:
# usermod -a -G mock <your username>
Questi sono i soli comandi che richiedono i privilegi di root
. Tutto il restante lavoro dovrebbe essere fatto dal normale utente o da un accout creato appositamente per lo sviluppo. I moderni sistemi basati su RPM, inclusa Fedora, sono configurati per costruire e testare i pacchetti RPM puramente all'interno di un account senza privilegi. Il comando
$ rpmdev-setuptree
imposta un'area di lavoro all'interno di ~/rpmbuild
. Questa cartella conterrà diverse sottocartelle per il codice sorgente, i file di configurazione e per i risultanti pacchetti sorgente e binari.
Costruire un rpm "Hello World"
We need the source code of the project we are packaging, often referred
to as the 'upstream' source. We will download it from the project's website into the ~/rpmbuild/SOURCE
directory. We are getting the compressed tarball archive, which happens to be a preferred distribution form for
most FOSS projects.
$ cd ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES $ wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.8.tar.gz
The RPM package is configured by .spec
files. We will create a template
file hello.spec
in the appropriate directory:
$ cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS $ rpmdev-newspec hello
Recent versions of Emacs
and vi
have .spec file editing modes which will also bring up a similar template upon creating a new file. So you can just use the following command for example to use the template automatically.
vi hello.spec
Inside a .spec
file
The fields in our .spec
file need slight editing. Please follow the Fedora rules for these fields. In our case, the file might start as follows:
Name: hello Version: 2.8 Release: 1 Summary: The "Hello World" program from GNU License: GPLv3+ URL: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello Source0: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.8.tar.gz %description The "Hello World" program, done with all bells and whistles of a proper FOSS project, including configuration, build, internationalization, help files, etc. %changelog * Thu Jul 07 2011 The Coon of Ty <Ty@coon.org> - 2.8-1 - Initial version of the package
The Version
should mirror upstream while Release
numbers our work within Fedora.
The first letter of the Summary
should be uppercase to avoid rpmlint complaints.
It is your responsibility to check the License
status of the software, by inspecting the source files and/or their LICENSE files, and/or by talking to the authors.
The Group
tag was historically used to classify the package in accordance to the list in /usr/share/doc/rpm-<version>/GROUPS
. It is being phased out so you will not see it added by default. However, it doesn't hurt to add it anyway.
The %changelog
should document the work on preparing the RPM, especially if there are security and bug patches included on top of the base upstream source. Changelog data can be displayed by rpm --changelog -q <packagename>
, which is very useful for instance to find out if specific bug and security patches were included in the installed software, thanks to diligent Fedora packagers who include this info with the relevant [[1]] numbers.
The changelog entry should include the version string to avoid rpmlint complaints.
Multi-line sections like %changelog
or %description
start on a line under the directive, and end with an empty line.
Lines which aren't needed (e.g. BuildRequires
and Requires
) can be commented out with a hash ('#') for now.
Many lines in the template don't need to be changed at all in many cases, at least for the initial attempt.
Building the package
We are ready for the first run to build source, binary and debugging packages:
$ rpmbuild -ba hello.spec
It will complain and list the unpackaged files, i.e. the files that would be installed in the system that weren't declared as belonging to the package. We need to declare them in the %files
section. Do not hardcode names like /usr/bin/
, but use macros, like %{_bindir}/hello
instead. The manual pages should be declared in the %doc
subsection: %doc %{_mandir}/man1/hello.1.gz
.
This is an iterative process: after editing the .spec
file, rerun rpmbuild
.
Since our program uses translations and internationalization, we are seeing a lot of undeclared i18 files. The recommended method to declare them is:
- find the filenames in the
%install
step:%find_lang %{name}
- add the required build dependencies:
BuildRequires: gettext
- use the found filenames
%files -f %{name}.lang
If the program uses GNU info files, you need to make sure the installation and uninstallation of the package does not interfere with other software on the system, by using this boilerplate:
- delete the 'dir' file in %install:
rm -f %{buildroot}/%{_infodir}/dir
Requires(post): info
andRequires(preun): info
- add those steps:
%post /sbin/install-info %{_infodir}/%{name}.info %{_infodir}/dir || : %preun if [ $1 = 0 ] ; then /sbin/install-info --delete %{_infodir}/%{name}.info %{_infodir}/dir || : fi
A complete hello.spec
file
Here's the initial version of hello.spec
:
Name: hello Version: 2.8 Release: 1%{?dist} Summary: The "Hello World" program from GNU License: GPLv3+ URL: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/%{name} Source0: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/%{name}/%{name}-%{version}.tar.gz BuildRequires: gettext Requires(post): info Requires(preun): info %description The "Hello World" program, done with all bells and whistles of a proper FOSS project, including configuration, build, internationalization, help files, etc. %prep %setup -q %build %configure make %{?_smp_mflags} %install %make_install %find_lang %{name} rm -f %{buildroot}/%{_infodir}/dir %post /sbin/install-info %{_infodir}/%{name}.info %{_infodir}/dir || : %preun if [ $1 = 0 ] ; then /sbin/install-info --delete %{_infodir}/%{name}.info %{_infodir}/dir || : fi %files -f %{name}.lang %doc AUTHORS ChangeLog COPYING NEWS README THANKS TODO %{_mandir}/man1/hello.1.gz %{_infodir}/%{name}.info.gz %{_bindir}/hello %changelog * Tue Sep 06 2011 The Coon of Ty <Ty@coon.org> 2.8-1 - Initial version of the package
With this spec file, you should be able to successfully complete the build process, and create the source and binary RPM packages.
Next you should check them for conformance with RPM design rules, by running rpmlint
on the spec file and all RPMs:
$ rpmlint hello.spec ../SRPMS/hello* ../RPMS/*/hello*
If there are no warnings or errors, we've succeeded. Otherwise, append the error messages to the rpmlint -i
command to see a more verbose description of the rpmlint
diagnostics.
The mock
builds
To check that the package build will succeed in the Fedora restricted build environment, check it with mock.
$ mock -r fedora-15-i386 --rebuild ../SRPMS/hello-2.7-1.fc15.src.rpm
References
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_RPM_packages_%2820090405%29
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_the_Koji_build_system
History
Przemek Klosowski wrote this tutorial when he worked through Christoph Wickert's IRC session on building RPMs using Rahul Sundaram suggestion of GNU "Hello World" as a test case. After he wrote up his experience, he found out about the excellent and extensive How to create an RPM package page on this wiki, as well as the Christian Lyder Jacobsen's website. However, Christian isn't planning to update his site, and it seemed that a 5-minute 'fast food' alternative to the more extensive article might suit some people. More in-depth information on using and building RPM packages is available from other sources.