[HELP] Changing source archive in srpm

[Ville Skyttä]

On Wednesday 18 February 2009, Mathieu Bridon (bochecha) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Because of a leagl issue, I have to remove a file from the upstream
> archive in one of my RPMs [1]
>
> How should I do that ?

Others have already chimed in, but here's what I consider good practice:

- Always do it with a script.

- Include the script in the source rpm (no need to add build dependencies for 
  the tools it uses).

- Rename the modified archive some way to make it distinguishable from vanilla 
  upstream one just by looking at the archive's basename.

- Use good compression (tar with bzip2 or lzma) when generating the modified
  one in order to possibly save a bit of space.

- Do not use a URL in the SourceX line of the archive unless the modified 
  archive is actually downloadable from that URL, use a plain filename 
  instead.

- Place a comment like "SourceX generated with SourceY" above the modified 
  SourceX archive (where SourceY is the script), and another comment why a 
  modified archive is used in the first place to the specfile or to the 
  script.