Update @ 2013-12-30: If you are working on fedora core4, please refer to the comment by Gurce. Thx Gurce. =D

Recently, i need to study building a rpm package. after searching on google, i found a very useful document about how to build and rpm.

Reference: RPMS for fun and Profit or, How I Learned to Love the Package

So first of all, i setup an openSUSE 11.2 vm for my building purpose. This is the first time i use openSUSE and i found that the graphics look good and the YaST manager is really useful for package management and system configuration.

so make sure u have the require softwares for building rpm like gcc, make and build etc…

here comes to the steps. =)
*The .spec file i used in this post is different from the one in the above reference link. If i used that .spec file, the build will fail due to file not found or undeclared file in the %file stage.

1. Create the following folders as your rpm home folder

• */rpm
• */rpm/BUILD
• */rpm/RPMS
• */rpm/SOURCES
• */rpm/SPECS
• */rpm/SRPMS

2. Create the .rpmmacros at your home folder for your own rpm build configuration

%packager       ykyuen <yingkityuen@gmail.com>

%_topdir        /home/ykyuen/rpm
%_tmppath       /var/tmp

%_rpmtopdir     %{_topdir}
%_builddir      %{_rpmtopdir}/BUILD
%_rpmdir        %{_rpmtopdir}/RPMS
%_sourcedir     %{_rpmtopdir}/SOURCES
%_specdir       %{_rpmtopdir}/SPECS
%_srcrpmdir     %{_rpmtopdir}/SRPMS

3. Download the hello-2.1.1.tar.gz to */rpm/SOURCES folder

• wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz

4. Create the hello-2.1.1.spec in the */rpm/SPECS folder

Summary: GNU Hello
Name: hello
Version: 2.1.1
Release: 1
Source: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz
URL: http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/hello.html
License: GPL
Group: System Environment/Libraries
%description
This project is an example that demonstrates GNU coding standards.
%prep
%setup
%build
CFLAGS="$RPM_OPT_FLAGS" ./configure --prefix=%{_prefix}
make
%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
make DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT install
%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
%doc AUTHORS BUGS ChangeLog COPYING INSTALL NEWS README THANKS TODO
%{_prefix}/bin/hello
%{_prefix}/info/dir
%{_prefix}/info/hello.info.gz
%{_prefix}/man/man1/*
%{_prefix}/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/hello.mo
%changelog
* Wed Dec 23 2009 ykyuen <yingkityuen@gmail.com>
- First draft of the spec file

5. Run the rpm build command

• rpmbuild -ba hello-2.1.1.spec

6. If everything works fine u should be able to find the following 2 rpm files.

• */rpm/RPMS/i586/hello-2.1.1-1.i586.rpm
• */rpm/SRPMS/hello-2.1.1-1.src.rpm

7. Then you can try to install the rpm u just created and test it

• rpm -ivh hello-2.1.1-1.i586.rpm

Done =)