Custom use of RPM - how to organize it?

Question

I'd like to to hook into an existing and well tested RPM deployment system for deploying a module of mine. It simply consists of 3rd party binaries in a tar.gz file and a Bash script to install and configure it to my custom specification.

Are there any standard ways of doing this with RPM? I don't have sources to build, for example, but all the examples I can find assume I am building from source. I'd like to adhere as close as possible to what's standard, so what's the best way to organize this RPM?

Answer 1

The %build section is entirely optional in an rpm spec file.

If you don't need one then you don't need to include one and can skip it.

Just have a %prep section which extracts your tarball and an %install section which puts the files in the right places under the buildroot and a %files section to package them (and the header metadata lines of course).

If your script to install and configure it needs to be run on the target/deployment system then you need to put that in a %post scriptlet instead of the %install section.