== Setting up to build RPMs

There's three ways to build RPMs: the silly way, the easy way, and
the better way.

The silly way starts with _[[/bin/su ../sysadmin/ASysadminTwitch]]
root_, which should be enough of a warning sign. You really don't want
to be building and installing packages as root unless you don't have a
choice, and you do.

The easy way is:

> _$ cat >$HOME/.rpmmacros \\
> ((%_topdir)) /some/where \\
> ^D \\
> $ cd /some/where \\
> $ mkdir BUILD RPMS SOURCES SPECS_

Then you can build as a normal user out of your _/some/where_ hierarchy.
I tend to use something like _/u/cks/sys/RPM_, but where you put it is
up to you. (I always use absolute paths and I suspect that RPM requires
them, so you can't use _$HOME_ or _~/.._ or the like.)

The problem with the easy way is that you wind up with an awful jumble
in the _SOURCES_ and _SPECS_ subdirectories, because all of your sources
and patches wind up in _SOURCES_, and all of your RPM spec files wind
up in _SPECS_. This also makes it all but impossible to work with two
versions of an RPM at the same time, since their specfiles usually
stage a duel to the death.

The better way isn't original to me; I got it from Red Hat's
Mike A. Harris. Put the following in your $HOME/.rpmmacros instead
of the easy version:

> _((%_topdir)) /some/where \\
> ((%_sourcedir)) ((%{_topdir}/SOURCES/%{name}-%{version})) \\
> \\
> ((%_specdir)) ((%{_sourcedir}))_

This puts all of the bits of a given version of an RPM, say
_liferea-1.0.7_, in _SOURCES/liferea-1.0.7_, instead of spread out
across two flat directories. Which is *much* easy to work with and keep
track of. (Trust me; I did it the 'easy' way for a while until I got
totally fed up and found Mike Harris's version.)

(Ob-attr-darnit: [[here http://www.rpm.org/hintskinks/buildtree/]] on
[[rpm.org http://www.rpm.org/]]. Note that some of the information
linked there is a bit out of date; for example, you no longer need a
_.rpmrc_ to have your _.rpmmacros_ acted on.)