rpm tutorial

[Emmanuel Seyman]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 06:17:29PM -0500, Jason Ashbaugh wrote:
> 
> 1. How to build my own RPM's from source files for programs not
> currently in the tree and

Building an rpm consists of a source tarball, patches if any, and
a configuration file called a spec file (usually called foo.spec
where foo is the name of the package). The spec file gives the
commands to build the package and the order in which to apply the
patches. You can then build a .src.rpm (collection of the source,
patches and spec file) or a arch.rpm (where arch is normally i386),
a collection of files generated by the building.

I would check out the rpm.org website and fedora.us's sample spec file.
Both are very good sources of information.

> 2. How to integrate them into yum etc... (some sort of local yum
> database?)

yum-arch will allow you to create a yum database for the rpms in a
given directory. Add this to /etc/yum.conf and you're gold.

> If there's a howto for this stuff or something that would be great, or
> just some friendly pointers!

rpm: see rpm.org
yum: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO/index.html

Emmanuel