RPM – How to Build RPM Package

This article represents tips to build RPM package using rpmbuild command. Please feel free to comment/suggest if I missed to mention one or more important points. Also, sorry for the typos.

Following are the key points described later in this article:

• Install RPMBuild Package
• Instructions to Create RPMs

Install RPMBuild Package

• Make sure that rpmbuild exists. Type rpmbuild in command line and confirm that usage text appears.
• In case, rpmbuild does not exists, download it using command, “yum -y install rpm-build”

Instructions to Create RPMs

• Create a top level folder such as “rpmbuild” within home directory.
• Go to rpmbuild folder using command such as “cd rpmbuild”
• Create following folder within rpmbuild folder:
  • BUILD
  • BUILDROOT
  • RPMS
  • SOURCES
  • SPECS
  • SRPMS
• Create a SPEC file with extension as *.spec under folder SPECS
• Execute following command from within rpmbuild folder:

  rpmbuild --define "_topdir $(pwd)" --define "version 1.0" --define "release 0" -v -bb "$(pwd)/SPECS/"
  

Once the command, rpmbuild, results into success, one would find file with extension *.rpm within RPMS/noarch. One could then install the RPM package using commands such as following:

rpm -ivh <rpm_name>