To build RPM you will need several other packages:
--------------------------------------------------


The zlib library for compression support available from
	http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/

The berkeley db library db.1.85, or db.2* (currently the latest is
db-2.6.4) with compatibility mode for db.1.85 defined.  The developers
of RPM did not upgrade RPM to use the current version of libdb because
they are uncomfortable with changes in the softwares license.  Now db2
has a special exception license within glibc-2.1 so whatever license
discomfort there is/was is quickly becoming moot.  The remaining issue
is that the db_185 compatibility does not work in glibc-2.1.  This is
available from
	http://www.sleepycat.com/download.html.

The instructions for building db-2.6.4:

	cd build_unix 
	../dist/configure --enable-compat185
	make
	make install


It may be desired to install bzip2 and gzip so that RPM can use these
formats.  Gzip, is necessary to build packages that contain compressed
tar balls, these are quite common on the Internet.
These are availible from
	http://www.digistar.com/bzip2/index.html
	http://www.gnu.org/

If National Language Support (NLS) is desired 
you will need gnu gettext available from
	http://www.gnu.org/

If you need support of RPM 1.x databases, which are in an old RPM
format. You will need the GNU db library gdbm to build the rpmconvert
binary. This is availible from :
	http://www.gnu.org/

For best results you should compile with GCC and GNU Make.  Users have
reported difficulty with other build tools.  available from
	http://www.gnu.org/


To compile RPM:
--------------

If your libraries are in a standard place you will need to change
the configure environment.

Here is an example:
	LIBS='-L/opt/libz/ -L/opt/BerkeleyDB/lib/' \
	CPPFLAGS='-I/opt/libz/ -I/opt/BerkeleyDB/include' \
	export LIBS CPPFLAGS
	./configure

now build the system with:

	make

if you wish to make a tarfile of the binaries so that you may easily
install on other machines (ed note: what about putting gzip and bzip2
in the tar, modifying the /etc/rpmrc?):

	make tar

when installing do not forget to init the database (rpm --initdb)



Non Linux Configuration Issues:
------------------------------


OS dependencies:
----------------

Under Red Hat Linux all libraries (in fact all files distributed with
the OS) are under RPM control and this section is not an issue.

RPM will need to be informed of all the dependencies which were
satisfied before RPM was installed.  Typically this only refers to
libraries that are installed by the OS, but may include other
libraries and packages which are availible at the time RPM is
installed and will not under RPM control.  Another common example of
libraries which may need dependency provisions are precompiled
libraries which are installed by the OS package manager during system
build time.  The list of dependencies you will wish to load into RPM
will depend on exactly how you bootstrap RPM onto your system and what
parts of the sytem you put into packages as well as on the specific OS
you are using.

You should satisfy dependencies for all shells and interpreters. A
reasonable list of OS installed shells can be generated with:

   cat /etc/shells

You should satisfy dependencies for all system libraries. For each of
the system library directories you should run 

   echo * | find-provides.sh

(On Linux a list of system library directories can be found in
/etc/ld.so.conf, other OS require an experienced system administrator
to know where the libraries are.)


You may add as many "provides: " lines as you like to /etc/rpmrc/ but
they can not be continued.  Each line is limited to 8K bytes. Here is
a example (truncated) of the provides lines used by one user of
Digital Unix.

provides: /bin/sh /usr/bin/ksh /usr/bin/csh 
provides: libc.so.osf.1 libm.so.osf.1 libcurses.so.xpg4 libdb.so.osf.1
provides: libX11.so libXaw.so.6.0 libXext.so libXm.so.motif1.2 libXmu.so
provides: libdnet_stub.so.osf.1 libsecurity.so.osf.1 libpthread.so.osf.1
provides: libexc.so.osf.1 libmach.so.osf.1 libdps.so libdpstk.so 



rpmfilename:
-----------

If you plan on packaging for more then one OS you may want to edit
/etc/rpmrc and change the line which has rpmfilename to something
which include both the %{OS} and %{ARCH}.  This will cause the name of
the generated rpm files to the operating system name as well as the
architecture which the rpm runs under.  The line to change looks like:

> rpmfilename:    %{ARCH}/%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}.rpm

you may wish to include both the %{OS} and %{ARCH} in the final base
name, so that it's easier to distinguish between what package is
appropriate for a particular arch-os-version combo.  We suggest

> rpmfilename:    %{ARCH}/%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{OS}-%{ARCH}.rpm

There is no %{OS_VERSION} tag, so if you need to also distinguish between
RPMs for certain versions of the OS, you can hard-code the version in
the rpmrc on the build machine, so that .rpm files are generated with
the version as part of the filename.

For example when one user builds RPMs for Digital Unix 4.0b and 4.0d,
optimization is important and he will build one set of RPMs for the
EV4 processor and another set for the EV56 processor.  He specifies
both the OS version (if it's important, as it is for a few packages)
and the processor version by default by setting a special rpmfilename:
on the particular build machine.

The "rpmfilename: "tag on one machine (Digital Unix 4.0d, EV56 PWS 433)
looks like:

rpmfilename: %{OS}/4.0d/%{ARCH}/%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{OS}-%{ARCH}-ev56.rpm

For package `foo-1.1', at build time that would translate into:

	osf1/4.0d/alpha/foo-1.1-1.osf1-alphaev56.rpm