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Tips and Tricks: Building rpms without being root

by the editorial team

Contributed by Jesus Rodriguez

I got tired of having to become root to install a src.rpm and to build it. Turns out a little magic in $HOME/.rpmmacros will do the trick.

Do the following:

mkdir -p $HOME/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
echo “%home %(echo $HOME)” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

echo “%_topdir     %{home}/rpmbuild” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

Now when you install a src.rpm it will go to $HOME/rpmbuild/ instead of /usr/src/redhat/.

That’s it.

The information provided in this article is for your information only. The origin of this information may be internal or external to Red Hat. While Red Hat attempts to verify the validity of this information before it is posted, Red Hat makes no express or implied claims to its validity.

This entry was posted by the editorial team on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 1:27 pm and is filed under tips and tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 responses to “Tips and Tricks: Building rpms without being root”

  1. Anonymous says:
    June 5th, 2007 at 8:42 am

    You can do the same thing by running the ‘rpmdev-setuptree’ command from the rpmdevtools package.

  2. Jason O'Connell says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 10:11 am

    Thank you Jesus!

  3. Jesus M. Rodriguez says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    rpmdevtools works in fedora, but in RHEL4 where I first used the tip, I didn’t have rpmdevtools. Good to know that it’s automated.

  4. Bill Pitre says:
    June 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    Shouldn’t this:

    echo “%home %(echo $HOME)” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

    be changed to this?:

    echo “%home $(echo $HOME)” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

  5. SGhosh says:
    June 8th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    Hi Bill
    You are correct, that should be a $

    You can also compile rpms as user by adding the following subdirs:

    %{_topdir}/BUILD
    %{_topdir}/RPMS
    %{_topdir}/RPMS/i386
    %{_topdir}/SOURCES
    %{_topdir}/SPECS
    %{_topdir}/SRPMS

    Of course under RPMS directory, there should be a subdirectory for every arch you need to support.

  6. jerry says:
    June 10th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    In Fedora 7
    [jerry@server1 ~]$ mkdir -p $HOME/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
    [jerry@server1 ~]$ echo “%home %(echo $HOME)” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros
    bash: syntax error near unexpected token `(’
    [jerry@server1 ~]$ echo ‘%home %(echo $HOME)’ >> $HOME/.rpmmacros
    [jerry@server1 ~]$ echo “%_topdir %{home}/rpmbuild” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

  7. Bill R. Williams says:
    June 13th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    My variant on the static:
    mkdir -p $HOME/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
    which doesn’t provide the needed arch directories.

    I don’t have rpmtools installed, but it’s easy for me to create the needed rpmbuild tree by doing this:
    (cd /usr/src/redhat && \
    find * -type d -exec mkdir -vp $HOME/rpmbuild/{} \; )

    That way I always get a tree just line the “official” one installed with the distro. Works for RedHat and Fedora.

  8. John S. says:
    August 19th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    Ignore comment #4. It should be a % and not a $. That is, it is: echo “%home %(echo $HOME)” >> $HOME/.rpmmacros

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