This chapter covers advanced topics in creating packages. Dependencies are very important. You need to specify which packages or capabilities your package requires, so the RPM system can ensure that all requirements are met before allowing users to install the package. If you do not specify the dependencies properly, then you are defeating the integrity of the RPM system.

In addition to specifying what your package requires, it is also important to specify other dependency information. For example, if your package conflicts with another package, you need to very clearly state this. E-mail and Web server packages often conflict with other servers of the same type.

You can specify both package dependencies as well as build dependencies. For example, you may need certain developer libraries to build your package, but not to install it. These are build dependencies.

To help manage dependencies between packages and system configuration issues, you can set up trigger scripts. A trigger is a script in your package that gets executed when another package is installed or removed. If your package, for example, is an e-mail client program, it may need to execute a script should the e-mail server package change. This is a great usage for triggers.

If your package has a complicated installation, the normal RPM verification won’t be sufficient. To help the RPM system ensure the integrity of all the packages, you can write a verify script in your spec file to perform any extra commands necessary to verify your package has been properly installed.

Relocatable packages allow users to install your packages in different locations than originally planned. This is very useful when working with more than one version of Linux, or with other operating systems. For example, most Linux commands are stored in /usr/bin, at least for Red Hat Linux. Other Linux distributions, or other operating systems may specify that programs added to the original set should be stored in /opt/bin and not /usr/bin, for example. Making your package relocatable helps users in these situations.

Conditional directives in your spec file allow you to control the build on different processor architectures and operating systems. The %if directive tests if a value is set. If so, then all the directives up to the %endif directive are executed. If you need to execute a different set of directives, use %else. In this case, if the %if test is true, RPM executes the directives up to the %else. If the test is not true, RPM executes the directives up to the %endif.

Once you have your spec file defined, the next step is to start building packages. The next chapter covers options for the rpmbuild command and how you can use rpmbuild to make your packages.