My Packaging Notes
Author: Parag Nemade
Revision: 0.9
Initial Draft: Thursday Jun 29, 2006
Last Revised: Saturday Jul 22, 2006
NOTE: I am still reorganizing and reformatting following page. This not yet compelete page.
PackagingNotes
To create correct package that satisfies Fedora Package Guidelines, three things need to be considered.
1)Source tarball/Source Files
2)SPEC file
3)Source and Binary RPM testing
Source Tarball
1)Sorce tarball name must be in foo-{version}-{release}.tar.gz/foo-{version}-{release}.bz2/foo-{version}-{release}.zip format
2)Don't forget to include License file in tarball.
3)If you are only packager for upstream tarball and not able to alter it, then its ok for not to change tarball and include any such license.
Source Files
1)If package contains only number of files and not having any compressed tarball/zip file then care should be taken to add all files as number of Source tags for each file to be packaged.
Source0: file1.sh
Source1: file2.init
2)Don't forget to include License file in package also as separate file say
Source2: GPL
SPEC file Writing Guidelines
1) Before starting to write SPEC file, make sure that you have installed fedora-rpmdevtools rpm package.
2) Once you got it installed just execute fedora-newrpmspec. This will create newpackage.spec file.
3) newpackage.spec is Fedora spec file template.
4) Its not mandatory to use fedora-newrpmspec for writing SPEC file. You can start writing on your own SPEC file.
5) Now you need to check wiki pages while writing SPEC file
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/NamingGuidelines This is used for package name, its version, release, dist tag check ups.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingGuidelines This is used to make sure final SPEC file contains name, version, release, summary, group, license, BuildRrequires, requires, description, build, install, clean, changelog, files section that satisfies Fedora Packaging Guidelines.
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/RPMMacros This contains macros to be used instead of writing hard coded direcotry names
5) From the Paul Howarth's feedback to this page Any change to the upstream release, no matter how small, should have a new version number. There should never be two different versions of a tarball with different contents and the same version number as it only causes confusion. Similarly from the packager's viewpoint, any changes to the package (spec, patches, etc.) should result in an new release number for the package, for the same reasons.
Sample SPEC file for Simple GUI application
Here i am giving sample SPEC file foo.spec. This is spec file for GUI application foo-1.0.1.tar.gz that contains its version number as 1.0.1 and its going to install binary file foo and foo.desktop and it contains documentation files COPYING,README in tarball.
Name: foo
Version: 1.0.1
Release: 1%{?dist}
Summary: Write the summary for your package
Group: Find apropriate group for your package under /usr/share/doc/rpm-{version}/GROUPS
License: Find allowed Licenses on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines
URL: This URL contains online documentation for software being packaged.
Source0: This must be working upstream source tarball download link.
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)
BuildRequires: Any -devel package dependency should be added here.
Requires: Any package dependency should be added here.
%description
Add lines of description here that should not cross limit of 80 characters per line.
%prep
%setup -q
%build
%configure
make %{?_smp_mflags}
%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
make install DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT
desktop-file-install --vendor fedora \
--dir %{buildroot}%{_datadir}/applications \
--add-category X-Fedora \
--delete-original \
%{buildroot}%{_datadir}/applications/%{name}.desktop
%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%doc COPYING README
%{_bindir}/%{name}
%{_datadir}/applications/fedora-%{name}.desktop
%changelog
* Wed Jun 28 2006 Parag Nemade <pnemade@gmail.com> - 1.0.1-1
- Inital Release
Sample SPEC file for Application that contains Subpackage -devel
Suppose if above foo-1.0.1 tarball contains some header files, .so library files, then that should go into -devel subpackage for main base package.
Name: foo
Version: 1.0.1
Release: 1%{?dist}
Summary: Write the summary for your package
Group: Find apropriate group for your package under /usr/share/doc/rpm-{version}/GROUPS
License: Find allowed Licenses http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines
URL: This URL contains online documentation for software being packaged.
Source0: This must be working upstream source tarball download link.
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)
BuildRequires: Any -devel package dependency should be added here.
Requires: Any package dependency should be added here.
%description
Add lines of description here that should not cross limit of 80 characters per line.
%package devel
Summary: Summary for devel package.
Group: Development/Libraries
Requires: %{name} = %{version}-%{release}
%description devel
This package contains headers and libraries required to build base application
%prep
%setup -q
%prep
%setup -q
%build
%configure
make %{?_smp_mflags}
%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
make install DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT
desktop-file-install --vendor fedora \
--dir %{buildroot}%{_datadir}/applications \
--add-category X-Fedora \
--delete-original \
%{buildroot}%{_datadir}/applications/%{name}.desktop
%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%post -p /sbin/ldconfig
%postun -p /sbin/ldconfig
%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%doc COPYING README
%{_bindir}/%{name}
%{_datadir}/applications/fedora-%{name}.desktop
%files devel
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%{_includedir}/foo*.h
%{_libdir}/libfoo*.so
%{_libdir}/pkgconfig/%{name}.pc
%changelog
* Wed Jun 28 2006 Parag Nemade <pnemade@gmail.com> - 1.0.1-1
- Inital Release
Source and Binary RPM testing
Once you created SPEC file. Use following 5 steps to check for any errors in source RPM as well as Binary RPM.
Step 1: Create src.rpm using rpmbuild -bs foo.spec
Step 2: Use rpmlint on src.rpm as rpmlint -i foo-1.0.1-1.src.rpm if you got some warnings/errors. Try to solve it first.
More on rpmlint can be found at http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/CommonRpmlintIssues
Step 3: Once all errors are removed then use mock command to build binary rpm in mock environment. To setup mock environment,check following pages
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/MockTricks
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy/Mock
Mock setup used by me can be found at http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/ParagNemade/MockSetupUsingLocalMirror
Step 4: In case you got any problems in mock package build like command not found then check for required package to be added under Requires/BuildRequires. After doing that follow steps from step 1 again else skip to step5
Step 5: Now as you did successfull Mock build of you package, use rpmlint on Binary built RPM also for any missings in a package
rpmlint -i foo-1.0.1-1.fc6.i386.rpm
Solve all warning/error messages.
Thus you have got now successfully Package built according to Fedora Extras Packaging Guidlines.