In the process of building an RPM package, I have to specify the BuildRoot and later will be used in %install which invovles $RPM_BUILD_ROOT. I always think that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is the fake installation for RPM to perform packaging. Then, at install time using the RPM package, it will install into actual location. For example:
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/bin
I thought that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is for the packaging process only, and in some ways RPM can distinguish the $RPM_BUILD_ROOT and the actual install location when the user performs "rpm -ivh package.rpm" will be /usr/bin.
But recently upon reading some documents, it is suggested that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is the actual location which will be installed, and the $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is specified by user with the setting of environment variable $RPM_BUILD_ROOT in order to let the users install the package in their desire locations. Otherwise, $RPM_BUILD_ROOT will be null and it will install into the default location. In the above case, it is /usr/bin . Thus, $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is not just for packaging or "fake installation" process, but is a way for user to define install location, similar to select folder location in Windows.
I don't know my thinking is correct or not. Can someone please verify? Thanks in advance.
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT (or the equivalent %{buildroot} SPEC file macro) always holds the directory under which RPM will look for any files to package. The RPM scripts (e.g. the script that compresses the manual pages) will also use that value to know where to look for the files that were just installed. Normally, this value will be non-empty and contain a location away from the system directories - usually somewhere under /tmp or /var/tmp.
The author of the SPEC file is expected to make sure that make install (or whatever installer the software in question is using) will place any files under $RPM_BUILD_ROOT, with the same hierarchy that should be used when the software is finally installed. E.g. to have RPM install ls in /bin/ls, the %install SPEC file section should make sure that ls is placed in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/bin/ls.
The author of the SPEC file is also expected to use the BuildRoot: tag to specify a proper location. Alternatively, the build system could have an rpmrc RPM configuration file with a proper entry. In any case the build root should be set, so that:
Normal users will be able to build the source package.
Should the superuser ever build the source package, the build process will not clobber any system files, unless the superuser installs the resulting binary package. And yes, there may be a good reason to build some packages as root - for example, running the full glibc testsuite requires root privileges for some tests.
That said, RPM can and will build a package with an empty build root variable. In that case both the build install and the final destination locations will coincide. A potential call to e.g. make install will use the default locations, thus clobbering the system files under e.g. /usr/lib if run with sufficient privileges. Additionally, having /usr/bin/* in your %files section will happily pull the whole contents of the build host /usr/bin/ directory into your binary package.
Bottom line:
Never use an empty build root.
Do not build packages as root unless there is absolutely no other way.
the file ~/.rpmmacros defines the paths per user:
%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp
and one can also define them with rpmbuild command line parameters:
rpmbuild --define '_topdir /home/username/rpmbuild'
Related
I just installed Cmake from git clone wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.3.tar.gz in a new folder on a Linux server. The compilation worked but cmake command is not recognized from other paths. Should I copy the entire contents of cmake-2.8.0 folder to usr/local/bin? Or is the contents of bin folder that need to be copied?
Thanks
On Linux and other Unix-based systems, a common arrangement is to install packages to /opt and add relevant entries to the PATH environment variable to make them available. This is intended for packages not provided by the native package manager or distribution. By choosing an appropriate directory structure, this can be done in a way which also allows different versions to be installed simultaneously and the user can pick which one they want by adding the relevant directory to the PATH.
For the specific case of CMake asked about in the question, you can use a directory structure like /opt/cmake/<version> and then add the relevant /opt/cmake/<version>/bin directory to your PATH (e.g. /opt/cmake/3.8.2/bin for the 3.8.2 CMake release). You can even just download the official pre-built CMake tarballs, unpack them and move the top level directory into the /opt/cmake area as the particular version you downloaded. I've used this successfully on Linux, MacOS and Solaris, as I'm sure have many others.
Note that once you've run CMake on a particular source tree, the cmake executable doesn't need to be on the PATH any more. If cmake needs to be re-run, the build will do so itself and it records the full path to the cmake executable in its own cache, so the PATH isn't even consulted (this is essential in ensuring the same version of CMake continues to be used for all builds regardless of the PATH, since PATH can change between login sessions, etc.). You would only need cmake on your PATH if you intend to invoke cmake manually or for the first time you run it on a source tree, but in both of these cases you can always just use the full path to the cmake executable if you preferred.
I should also add that the entire set of files provided in the CMake package are required, not just the bin directory. CMake makes extensive use of files in its other directories, such as the various modules it comes with. If you are building CMake from source, you may want to build the package target so you get a relocatable tarball or similar which will contain everything that should be included when you provide a CMake package on your system.
After the build, use 'sudo make install'. This will make sure the correct libraries and binaries are copied to their proper places.
Usually this will install the binary to /usr/local/bin.
Make sure the PATH variable has this included.
sudo make install did not copy to /usr/local/bin/ for some reason, so I copied the content of CMAKE /bin. to usr/local/bin an it worked.
cp –a bin/. /usr/local/bin/
I have an application in /opt/MyApp that I need to pack into an RPM package using FPM as follows:
fpm -e -s dir -t rpm --name 'MyApp' --version '1.0' --iteration "12345" --directories /opt/MyApp --epoch 0 /opt/MyApp
(other options are not relevant here)
All files and directories in MyApp are owned by root (both user and group). Also there is a directory called "help" with different permissions like
drwxrwxrwx.
i.e. all users can write into that directory.
When I inspect the spec file generated by FPM, it has
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
and all directories (%dir) and files are then listed, so I would expect that all original permissions are preserved in this package. However, when I inspect it using
rpm -qlvp MyApp.rpm
the permission on the "help" directory are reset to:
drwxrwxr-x
i.e. other users cannot write there anymore.
My first guess was to add the option
--rpm-use-file-permissions
but it made things even worse, because now all files in RPM are owned by the user that called FPM.
Edited:
I've achieved the result using
--rpm-use-file-permissions --rpm-user root --rpm-group root
but still it doesn't feel elegant and flexible.
Thanks in advance.
The comment about %defattr, and absence of comments about the BUILDROOT tree may indicate some confusion. According to rpm.org:
If a particular attribute does not need to be specified (usually because the file is installed with that attribute set properly), then that attribute may be replaced with a dash
That is, if no explicit permission is given in %defattr, then the permissions from build-time %install when constructing the rpm are satisfactory. There is no guarantee that those match (or are even compatible with) the actual system on which the rpm is later installed.
Created a simple debian/ubuntu package with some library files (*.so).
Works fine except, it installs them as default in the root path "/".
Since I've recreated my Makefile to output to $DESTDIR/ instead of "the usual" directory that I provide in the Makefile, when compiling from source, how do I now set the path of where the files should be installed now? I know there are several choices when using dh_make to create the package, "s" being the default one. Still, can't seem to find anything on where to tell dpkg to put the installed files.
Secondly, a Deb Library package containing only ".so" files should still be a "Single binary" since I gather that using the Library is for development purposes? Since this is a library, I just wanna make sure that's not the cause of the files being installed in the wrong location. What I mean is .so files and header files installation?
What I've used:
dh_make -e my#email.com -f ../myfile-1.0.tar.gz
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
and some configurations set i debian/control, $DESTDIR in Makefile.
Seems that it was fairly simple, yet very confusing. This works, not sure if there is a better solution.
In my makefile I have a few variables
InstallTo = /usr/lib
install:
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(InstallTo)
cp $FILE_TO_COPY $(DESTDIR)$(InstallTo)
This way it will create the directory tree inside the *.deb file. I had some trouble using /usr/local/lib instead of /usr/lib/ and rmdir complained when trying to delete it and it had no files (just directories). Not sure why, but changed it to /usr/lib instead.
Since someone voted this up, I'm guessing someone were also looking for the answer and this is my solution. Perhaps someone can provide a better one if there is one.
Just a note, $DESTDIR variable is the variable that dh_make suggest the user to use in our Makefile. It's the path to where dpkg will build the program and where it will install it so it can be included in the .deb file.
I created a binary package with this command:
dpkg-deb --build -z9 -Zlzma $(DEB_SRC_DIR) $(DEB_DEST_DIR)
and install it on my Ubuntu 12.04 with this command:
sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package
The contents of the package I think are irrelevant.
Despite the sudo command the files in the installation directory belong to the current user and not to root as I expected.
How can I fix that?
Try to run the dpkg-deb command with fakeroot:
`fakeroot dpkg-deb ...`
(This will only help if the files in the source directory already have the correct ownership, which they probably dont. The problem you're actually trying to solve here, is to create an archive with files in it that belong to user root, which is where fakeroot theoretically helps.)
Let me say though, that what you are doing is not the best way for creating a binary package (far from it).
Instead, create a debian/ directory with dh_make (from the dh-make package), and edit the control file and changelog accordingly. You also need a file debian/install that lists what files you are installing and where they should go. There are various guides on the net (and on Stack Overflow) that explain this process. For example, look at the Debian New Maintainers' Guide.
You can then use dpkg-buildpackage to create a real, standard-conforming Debian package with your files in a reproducible way.
dpkg-deb is a low-level tool for manipulating existing deb files; it's not meant to be used for package creation.
My question regards the GNU build system, namely, the configure, make, make install build system. My question regards "make install" specifically. Let's say there is a bin directory a man directory etc. where I install all of my binaries and man pages. What happens if there is a name clash. For example what if there were a binary called program and then another package also has a binary called program? When I do make install on the second program will it overwrite the first?
The behavior of the "make install" command varies, but the short answer is essentially correct. "make install" typically copies files from the build directory to some system directories, and those files would overwrite files that already existed in the destination directories.