Cheating with FPM

Building operating system deliverables, such as RPMs, with a spec file is very useful knowledge. However, sometimes you don't need the rigor of a real spec file. The spec file is, after all, optimized for the scenario where you are not yourself the originator of the code base.

There is a Ruby-based tool called FPM, which can generate source RPMs suitable for building, directly from the command line.

The tool is available on GitHub at https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm.

On Fedora, you can install FPM like this:

yum install rubygems
yum install ruby
yum install ruby-devel gcc
gem install fpm  

This will install a shell script that wraps the FPM Ruby program.

One of the interesting aspects of FPM is that it can generate different types of packages; among the types supported are RPM and Debian.

Here is a simple example to make a Hello World shell script:

#...