Package Build Process

Overview

• Unpack srpm/tar (optional)
• Parse the spec
  • If buildarch detected parse spec multiple times - once for each arch with _target_cpu macro set
  • Build will iterate over all the spec variants and build multiple versions
• Execute internal %mkbuilddir script to create %builddir
• Check static build requires
• Execute present build scriptlets
  • %prep
  • %generate_buildrequires
    • re-check build requires - stop build on errors
  • %conf
  • %build
  • %install
  • Read dynamic spec parts
  • %check
• Process files
  • Turn %files lines into actual files (evaluate globs)
    • Read from -f param
  • Run file classifier
  • Run dependency generators
  • Check packaged files against install root
• Create packages
• Clean up
  • %clean

Tunables

The build process can be tuned and tweaked in lots of ways via macro configurables.

Parallelism

Various aspects of run in parallel on SMP systems. Rpm estimates the number of processes/threads to use based on detected resources and normally there’s no need to touch these but sometimes it’s necessary to work around buggy make-files, tune the parameters for an unusual compilation resource usage or such.

Macro name	Description
%_smp_ncpus_max	Maximum number of CPUs
%_smp_nthreads_max	Maximum number of threads
%_smp_build_ncpus	Number of CPUs to use for building
%_smp_build_nthreads	Number of threads to use for building
%_smp_tasksize_proc	Assumed task size of a process
%_smp_tasksize_thread	Assumed task size of a thread

Package generation

Macro name	Description
%_binary_filedigest_algorithm	Compression algorithm of binary packages
%_source_filedigest_algorithm	Compression algorithm of source packages
%_changelog_trimage	Maximum age of %changelog entries
%_changelog_trimtime	Cut-off date of %changelog entries

Debuginfo

Macro name	Description
%_enable_debug_packages	Enable generation of debuginfo packages
%_include_minidebuginfo	Include minimal debuginfo in binaries directly
%_include_gdb_index	Include a .gdb_index section to .debug files
%_build_id_links	BuildID link generation: none/alldebug/separate/compat
%_unique_build_ids	Use version info to seed the BuildIDs
%_unique_debug_names	Use version info to differentiate .debug files
%_unique_debug_srcs	Use version info to differentiate debug sources
%_debugsource_packages	Generate a separate sub-package for debug sources
%_debuginfo_subpackages	Generate debuginfo packages per sub-package
%_no_recompute_build_ids	Preserve pre-existing BuildIDs

Packaging hygiene

Various packaging sanity check overrides for dealing with legacy content.

Macro name	Description
%_unpackaged_files_terminate_build	Excess files in buildroot terminates build
%_duplicate_files_terminate_build	Duplicates in %files terminates build
%_missing_doc_files_terminate_build	Missing %doc files terminates build
%_empty_manifest_terminate_build	Empty %files -f manifest terminates build
%_binaries_in_noarch_packages_terminate_build	ELF binaries in noarch packages terminates build
%_invalid_encoding_terminates_build	Non-UTF8 encoding in package data terminates build
%_wrong_version_format_terminate_build	Invalid version format in dependencies terminates build
%_missing_build_ids_terminate_build	ELF files without BuildIDs terminates builds (if debuginfo creation enabled)
%_nonzero_exit_pkgcheck_terminate_build	Package check program failing terminates build
%_build_pkgcheck	Progam to run on each generated binary package
%_build_pkcheck_set	Program to run on the generated binary package set

Reproducability

Macro name	Description
%source_date_epoch_from_changelog	Set SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH from latest %changelog entry
%use_source_date_epoch_as_buildtime	Set package BuildTime to SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
%clamp_mtime_to_source_date_epoch	Ensure file timestamps are not newer than SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH (deprecated)
%build_mtime_policy	Defines file timestamp handling

The supported values for %build_mtime_policy are:

• (unset) leave the mtimes as is
• clamp_to_source_date_epoch clamp the mtimes so that they are not bigger than the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
• clamp_to_buildtime clamp the mtimes so that they are not bigger than the package build time (i.e. the time that is used for the BUILDTIME tag)

Vendor defaults

These can be used to automatically populate some common spec tags without changing the spec itself.

Macro name	Description
%bugurl	BugURL tag
%distribution	Distribution tag
%disturl	DistURL tag
%disttag	DistTag tag
%packager	Packager tag
%vendor	Vendor tag

Dependencies

See dependency generators.