Hi

I tried to owerride topdir using /etc/rpmrc and ~/.rpmrc:
topdir: /mytopdir

I did also try do use tags like vendor and packager
This resulted in error messages like:
  bad option 'topdir' at /etc/rpmrc:1
  bad option 'vendor' at /etc/rpmrc:2
  bad option 'packager' at /etc/rpmrc:3

Then I instead tried to create ~/.rpmmacros :
%_topdir    /mytopdir
%vendor    foo
%packager  bar

This worked !!!!!

I think that rpm should have given me a better errormessage when I tried to
use a rpmrc file, especially when resouces like MaximumRPM states :"The
vendor entry is a great example of a good candidate for inclusion in
/etc/rpmrc"