Multiple build areas

It is possible to run several RPM builds on the same machine using separate RPM databases. On my build machine I have several build areas which all run builds at the same time. The builds do not interfere with each other. Each build behaves as if it was running on its own machine and no build area knows about the RPM database which actually configures the machine.

First, setup a "topdir" in a prefix other then where RPM is installed. You will need to make the directories. They need to be writable by the account which will do the building, typically they are owned by the buildmaster account and set to permissions 755.

            BUILD RPMS SOURCES SPECS SRPMS

Next, you will need to decide where the database files live. I suggest putting them in a separate directory under "topdir". I call my directory DB and it has the same owner and permissions as the other directories.

Each separate build area needs a rpmrc and macro configuration file. This will need to specify the new topdir and dbpath. If you will be building the same packages in different work areas you will also need to specify a tmppath into the topdir. I suggest either making tmppath be the same as the BUILD directory or adding another directory called BUILDROOT for it in the topdir.

Keeping track of the correct rpmrc for each build area can be difficult. To make my life easier I make a small shell script with the topdir hard coded inside:

            #!/bin/sh
            /bin/rpm --rcfile /topdir/rpmrc "$@"
            exit $?

I call the shell script rpm and it lives in the topdir. Each time I wish to use a particular build area I just ensure that the build area is first in my path so that when I run "rpm" I get the regular rpm binary but I am using the local build areas rpmrc.