6. Building RPMs

6.3 The Header

The header has some standard fields in it that you need to fill in. There are a few caveats as well. The fields must be filled in as follows:

• Summary: This is a one line description of the package.
• Name: This must be the name string from the rpm filename you plan to use.
• Version: This must be the version string from the rpm filename you plan to use.
• Release: This is the release number for a package of the same version (ie. if we make a package and find it to be slightly broken and need to make it again, the next package would be release number 2).
• Icon: This is the name of the icon file for use by other high level installation tools (like Red Hat's ``glint''). It must be a gif and resides in the SOURCES directory.
• Source: This line points at the HOME location of the pristine source file. It is used if you ever want to get the source again or check for newer versions. Caveat: The filename in this line MUST match the filename you have on your own system (ie. don't download the source file and change its name). You can also specify more than one source file using lines like:

  Source0: blah-0.tar.gz
  Source1: blah-1.tar.gz
  Source2: fooblah.tar.gz
  

  These files would go in the SOURCES directory. (The directory structure is discussed in a later section, "The Source Directory Tree".)
• Patch: This is the place you can find the patch if you need to download it again. Caveat: The filename here must match the one you use when you make YOUR patch. You may also want to note that you can have multiple patch files much as you can have multiple sources. ] You would have something like:

  Patch0: blah-0.patch
  Patch1: blah-1.patch
  Patch2: fooblah.patch
  

  These files would go in the SOURCES directory.
• Copyright: This line tells how a package is copyrighted. You should use something like GPL, BSD, MIT, public domain, distributable, or commercial.
• BuildRoot: This line allows you to specify a directory as the ``root'' for building and installing the new package. You can use this to help test your package before having it installed on your machine.
• Group: This line is used to tell high level installation programs (such as Red Hat's ``glint'') where to place this particular program in its hierarchical structure. The group tree currently looks something like this:

  Applications
      Communications
      Editors
          Emacs
      Engineering
      Spreadsheets
      Databases
      Graphics
      Networking
      Mail
      Math
      News
      Publishing
          TeX
  Base
      Kernel
  Utilities
      Archiving
      Console
      File
      System
      Terminal
      Text
  Daemons
  Documentation
  X11
      XFree86
          Servers
      Applications
          Graphics
          Networking
      Games
          Strategy
          Video
      Amusements
      Utilities
      Libraries
      Window Managers
  Libraries
  Networking
      Admin
      Daemons
      News
      Utilities
  Development
      Debuggers
      Libraries
          Libc
      Languages
          Fortran
          Tcl
      Building
      Version Control
      Tools
  Shells
  Games
  

• %description It's not really a header item, but should be described with the rest of the header. You need one description tag per package and/or subpackage. This is a multi-line field that should be used to give a comprehensive description of the package.