Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 441392
rpm fails to give a useful error message if rpm-build is not installed
Last modified: 2008-04-22 11:45:02 EDT
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): I encountered this bug when attemping some builds on Fedora 8, so the F8 rpm is definitely affected. I've been told that the problem persists in current rpm as well, but I haven't verified that myself yet. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install Fedora 8 (or newer) 2. cvs co xorg-x11-xserver; cd xorg-x11-xserver/F-8 3. make prep Actual results: [cworth@mandolin F-8]$ make prep rpm --define "_sourcedir /home/cworth/fedora/xorg-x11-server/F-8" --define "_specdir /home/cworth/fedora/xorg-x11-server/F-8" --define "_builddir /home/cworth/fedora/xorg-x11-server/F-8" --define "_srcrpmdir /home/cworth/fedora/xorg-x11-server/F-8" --define "_rpmdir /home/cworth/fedora/xorg-x11-server/F-8" --define "dist .fc8" --define "fedora 8" --nodeps -bp xorg-x11-server.spec -bp: unknown option make: *** [prep] Error 1 Expected results: rpm: Error: The rpm-build package is required to perform the requested information. Please execute "yum install rpm-build" and then try again. Or something to that effect. Without a useful error message like this, I was totally mystified.
This isn't an rpm bug but one in the Fedora dist-cvs Makefile.common: "rpm" command support building packages in many many years, but the Makefile.common happily subsititutes rpmbuild for it if rpmbuild isn't available: ifndef RPM RPM := $(shell if test -f /usr/bin/rpmbuild ; then echo rpmbuild ; else echo rpm ; fi) endif Reassigning to infrastructure...
Duh, apologies for typos, that should've read: "rpm" command hasn't supported building packages in many many years. Falling back to "rpm" if "rpmbuild" isn't available doesn't make any sense as it wont work, it just complain loudly if "rpmbuild" command can't be found.
Fixed.