[wplug] tarballs to RPMs

[Brian Sammon]

> Any one here ever turned tarballs into RPM's?
> I'm trying to get started doing this.
> I looked at KRPMbuilder but I'm not sure it even works.

Back when I used to do this, (around 1999), the bible was "Maximum RPM", and 
it was very helpful.  It's gotten very out of date, and a volunteer 
bazaar-style effort to update it is proceeding very slowly, but it may still 
be useful.
It's at http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/
The base URL, http://www.rpm.org/ looks like it may have some useful 
information as well.

> I have a source tarball that compiles fine using ./configure then make (it's 
> MPlayer).
> 
> I tried:
> 
> rpm -ta --target athlon-SuSE-linux MPlayer-1.0pre3.tar
> 
> but got the error:
> 
> Building for target athlon-SuSE-linux
> line 1: Unknown tag: name       mplayer_wine

It looks like you may actually have a spec file in the tarball, so you may not 
have to start from scratch.
The thing to do now is to look at the specfile and figure out why it isn't 
working with the version of RPM on your computer.  (I'll assume for the moment 
that there is a version of RPM it _does_ work with).
Also, forget about "rpm -t" for the moment, and try putting the specfile in 
/usr/src/packages/SPECS, and the tarball in /usr/src/packages/SOURCES and do
"rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/packages/SPECS/<specfile>"
If you want help with that, you could post the spec-file here and tell us what 
version of RPM you are using and maybe someone could help you.