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Description of problem: When you attempt to do an operation which involves unpacking a specfile from tarball, and no specfile is present, rpmbuild creates a file whose name is output from tar in place where would one expect the specfile (in case the tarball was correct, of course). Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): rpm-4.4.2.1-1.fc7 Steps to Reproduce: $ rpmbuild -ta /dev/null error: File /dev/null is smaller than 4 bytes error: Name field must be present in package: (main package) error: Version field must be present in package: (main package) error: Release field must be present in package: (main package) error: Summary field must be present in package: (main package) error: Group field must be present in package: (main package) error: License field must be present in package: (main package) Actual results: $ ls ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/ tar: *.spec: Not found in archive This file is definitely weirdly named and is not a spec file. Expected results: The same -- loud complains. Just without the additional file in SPECS directory.
Congratulations! You are only the 12th person to ever report this bug. That qualifies you as a bona fide rpm hacker! Meanwhile, don't do that is the answer. Ther better answer is ripping support for rpmbuild -ta foo.tar.gz, but noone wants to hear that answer.
Jeff: If that sentence above the brilliant workaround is your usual response to bug reports I finally understand the poor reputation you have.
hunh ... and who fed rpmbuild garbage, ignored the return code, and then complained? Here I thought Unix like OS's provided power to users to push limits with new combinations of approaches, rather than holding their hands, having guard rails, and rolling over and dying. I guess saying that an 'error' was detected ** seven times **, and returning a non-zero return code was not enough. [herrold@couch ~]$ rpmbuild -ta /dev/null || echo "return code was not zero" error: File /dev/null is smaller than 4 bytes error: Name field must be present in package: (main package) error: Version field must be present in package: (main package) error: Release field must be present in package: (main package) error: Summary field must be present in package: (main package) error: Group field must be present in package: (main package) error: License field must be present in package: (main package) return code was not zero [herrold@couch ~]$ I wonder what will happen if I feed a chicken to rpmbuild ...
An error was detected alright, but creating files with weird names ('tar: *.spec: Not found in archive') as a side-effect is ugly if nothing else.
Fixed upstream (finally).