About this manual

This is the Refence Manual for the RPM Package Manager. Unfortunately it is still incomplete. Recently added features are described with decent detail but more basic properties are only being added step by step.

While this manual describes how rpm and rpmbuild are working it does not teach how to use them properly - especially when it comes to packaging. This is similar to how a reference manual for a programming language does not teach you programming or good coding style.

Though the RPM Reference Manual needs to be used in conjunction with Packaging Guidelines from the distribution the packages are aimed for. For enterprise distributions this may mean looking at the guidelines from the upstream (community) distribution. If you are not packaging for a distribution or one that doesn’t have guideline choose one from a distribution that is similar to your target environment.

This manual describes RPM as it is setup in the upstream release. Many distibution alter RPM in various ways. Either by changing macro values or by disabling - or forbidding the use of - some features. This is especially true for new features that may require some effort to enable properly throughout a distribution. The distributions decisions overwrite the upstream defaults and though this reference manual.