RPM Builder

FEATURES
--------

This program makes tar.gz archives into RPM packages.

Extensive knowledge about RPM packaging isn't necessary. You can make RPM
packages by only filling in some entries.

This program requires a Tcl/Tk interpreter. This program will not run in 
Windows, not for now, probably never. Why the hell would you want to 
maintain a Windows port, anyway?

There isn't much that you can choose in the options, no special prefixes,
no special conflicts or other -p-r-e-t-t-y- requires: or provides:, etc,
because this is only intended for newbies / build generic spec file.


INSTALL
-------

From tar.gz file:
	type: gzip -dc rpmbuilder-0.5.1.tar.gz | tar -xf -
	type: cd rpmbuilder-0.5.1
	type: sh ./INSTALL
	
	(The INSTALL script simply copies the rpmbuilder file to /usr/bin)
	
From rpm file:
	type: rpm -Uvh rpmbuilder-0.5.1-1.i386.rpm


BUILDING RPMS
-------------

This program currently creates the spec file and the actual RPM and SRPM files
as well. When they are built they are put in the normal directories, as defined
either by the default values (in /usr/lib/rpm/macros) or your personal values
(in ~/.rpmmacros)


CAVEATS, KNOWN BUGS, GUITY REPORTS
----------------------------------

There is NO WAY that you can know what files will be built in a package unless
you either
(1) take a look at the Makefile;
(2) have a binary .tar.gz you can poke around to see what files are needed
(3) you have a filelist

Unfortunately, this isn't a problem with rpmbuilder. It's a caveat with 
/bin/rpm itself and debian's dpkg.

A partial way to get around this would be to use wildcards and/or (missingok) 
though using (missingok) is NOT  recommended.


RPMBuilder cheats this by addin the %files with %{prefix}, aliased to
%{_prefix} , adding the following line:

%{prefix}/*

that means, every file under %prefix is included.


If you have too many groups, then the list kinds of rolls off the screen ...


If your resolution is 800x600 or below, chances are rpmbuilder will not display
correctly. A way to get around this would be to resize the window everytime
you startup, or maybe change your screen resolution.


If you use Mandrake, this does not create any menu entries ...


There is no changelog, yet. This should be quite easy to create, and will
appear in the next version.


PATCHES
-------

Currently if you use the Mandrake distro and you want to build from source,
you can use the Mandrake patch, maintained by Geoffrey Lee. It is not
100 % compliant yet but work is under way.




Copyright
---------
This program follows the GNU Public License (See COPYING).


Authors
-------

Dan Kuykendall <dan@kuykendall.org>
Geoffrey Lee <snailtalk@linux-mandrake.com>