Quick RPM lookaround

April 2005:
That is how I learnt about RPM packaging of software for Fedora Linux.
My goal was to create Fedora packages for Kolab, which is packaged with OpenPKG.

Links to RPM introductions

• The Basics of Developing With RPM
• Maximum RPM Manual (with example, the %setup and %patch macros)
• Building Packages with OpenPKG
• Packaging software with RPM (explains beside other things how to use patches)

Basic Idea of SRPMS

rpm -i some-package-0.0.1.src.rpm
will put some tar file(s) and patches in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES; and will put the some-package.spec file in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
to build the src.rpm and the rpm, run
rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/some-package.spec
That will create the files /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/some-package.src.rpm and /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/some-package.rpm.