OK, I never really had to deal with RPM internals before, but it
behaved like an oddball packaging format with some kind of binary
header, so I assumed that's what it was... but no. It appears that the
only supported way to build an RPM is by having an actual installer,
RUNNING it, and having RPM pluck the result out of the system where
you put it... at least that's what RPMbuild looks like it's doing. You
can't just create a spec file and a directory tree that contains what
you're going to package up, and say "OK, make an RPM out of the stuff
in this directory".
And you can't even make it do the work in a custom directory without
changing a magic dotfile in your home directory. So if you want to
make an automated RPM build process that's running on a shared build
server, you can't do it when anyone else is using the thing.
What kind of idiot would consider this hateful mess even vaguely a
good idea?
