SuSE-conformant rpms from tarballs
A while back there was some discussion here about how to construct SuSE-conformant rpms (i.e., they use SuSe-standard locations and spec files) from more or less arbitrary tarballs (.tgz files). I seem to remember a reference to a very unofficial howto by Lenz Grimmer and also some tool that helps with the task. Can someone recall that information for me? I like a clean system, and installing tarballs that the package manager doesn't know about or that put files in the wrong places works against that. Thanks. Paul
I can't help you specifically with what you are looking for, but I can tell you about my personal experiences. I have a page up for a few of the RPMs that I've created (I plan on putting more up as I create them: next on my list are reiserfstools) at http://home.earthlink.net/~noodlez84/rpm_packages.html . For small utils like cdrtools, I just took a look at "rpm -ql cdrecord" and saw that it just installed in the standard locations in /usr . Easily done. For larger tools like samba however, doing that is insufficient as the package is huge. Getting the .spec off the latest SRPM and compiling that failed miserably. Since SuSE complies as best is possible with the LSB, this simplifies things greatly: samba source includes a .spec in the packaging/LSB directory. Each .spec had its advantages: the .spec from SuSE because it's been tested on SuSE systems, and the one from LSB because that way it will work on more distributions that conform to the LSB. I also put in my own add-ons: SWAT is not only configured in /etc/inetd.conf but also in /etc/xinetd.conf . I've also compiled it with SSL support. Although I digitally sign all my packages with GPG, I can't obviously replicate the GnuPG Security Team's signature. :) Of course, none of this replaces actually installing and upgrading the package on a test SuSE system. I can reassure you that I use my own packages on my system. :) These are the steps I take when creating my RPM's. If you find the mini-HOWTO, please inform me. I am most interested in it... On 17 Sep 2001, Paul Abrahams wrote:
A while back there was some discussion here about how to construct SuSE-conformant rpms (i.e., they use SuSe-standard locations and spec files) from more or less arbitrary tarballs (.tgz files). I seem to remember a reference to a very unofficial howto by Lenz Grimmer and also some tool that helps with the task.
Can someone recall that information for me? I like a clean system, and installing tarballs that the package manager doesn't know about or that put files in the wrong places works against that. -- noodlez: Karol Pietrzak PGP KeyID: 0x3A1446A0
On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Paul Abrahams wrote:
A while back there was some discussion here about how to construct SuSE-conformant rpms (i.e., they use SuSe-standard locations and spec files) from more or less arbitrary tarballs (.tgz files). I seem to remember a reference to a very unofficial howto by Lenz Grimmer and also some tool that helps with the task.
Can someone recall that information for me? I like a clean system, and installing tarballs that the package manager doesn't know about or that put files in the wrong places works against that.
Meanwhile I have splitted the document into an official part and weeded out the SuSE-internals. It is still work in progress, the current state can be found here: http://www.suse.de/~grimmer/Package-Conventions/ Feedback is very welcome! I know, there is still a lot missing. A good reference is looking at existing spec files from the SRPMs. Bye, LenZ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lenz Grimmer SuSE GmbH mailto:grimmer@suse.de Schanzaeckerstr. 10 http://www.suse.de/~grimmer/ 90443 Nuernberg, Germany The trodden path is the safest.
participants (3)
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Karol Pietrzak -
Lenz Grimmer -
Paul Abrahams