rpm & rpmbuild - using global environment variable in the %files section

Question

I have been struggling for a while with this one. So I wrote a .specs file for my project and everything went fine. The rpm is built, the installation is smooth... but then I got some trouble because now, I have to use a custom global environment variable to set the install path.

This would give a %files section as such :

%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
$INSTALLPATH/Crystal/bin/Crystal.jar

Where Crystal is my project name, and INSTALLPATH is defined within env thanks to the export commandline. Then, when running buildrpm -ba Crystal.specs I have the following error:

error: File must begin with "/" : $INSTALLPATH/Crystal/bin/Crystal.jar

I have tried to define a macro inside the .rpmmacros file as such : %_installpath $INSTALLPATH

And in my specs file, when i do echo %{_installpath} I get the value I set in the .rpmmacros. But if I use it in %files:

%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
%{_installpath}/Crystal/bin/Crystal.jar

I get the same error again!

error: File must begin with "/" : $INSTALLPATH/Crystal/bin/Crystal.jar

I also tried defining a variable with the specs file and I have the same sad result. It looks like as long as my variable/macro is referencing to $INSTALL, then %files won't accept it. But I have to use this env variable!

So that's all I could think about. Anyone got a clue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Lumenhour

Answer 1

The %files section does not expand shell variables. You cannot do this that way.

You have a couple options that I can see offhand. You can

• generate a file with a list of your files (during %install or what-have-you) and then use %files -f files.lst

• expand $INSTALLPATH at rpm macro definition time with:

  # For RPM >= 4.7.0
  %_installpath %{getenv:INSTALLPATH}
  # For RPM < 4.7.0
  %_installpath %{lua:print(os.getenv("INSTALLPATH"))}
  

Tobit

Yes, that was it. I used the first solution. Thanks a lot! – Lumenhour

@Etan Reisner: You can use shell variables in %files section the same way as anywhere else in the spec, although that might be pretty ugly and unreadable. E.g. using %(echo $INSTALLPATH/Crystal/bin/Crystal.jar) should achieve what the OP wanted. – Ohalloran

@Ohalloran That's not the %files section expanding shell variables though (and I don't believe the %files section does that). That's rpm doing the expansion at parse time manually because you used the %(...) macro. But yes, that would (possibly) have worked... assuming %(...) expansions are performed in the right macro scope. – Tobit

@EtanReisner: Definitely works in %files section, we use it for some particularly ugly packages to tag certain files dynamically with %lang($lang) and basically create that part of the %files section on the fly. But your proposed solution with the files list is probably much cleaner for the OP :) – Ohalloran

@Ohalloran What specifically works in the %files section? An entry like /usr/lib/$shellvar? Your dynamically created file list contains %lang($lang) /path/to/file in it? Or does it contain %lang(en) /path/to/file? – Tobit

@EtanReisner: This is basically what I use in %files %(for lang in %langs ; do echo "%%lang($lang) /path/to/file-$lang" done) where %langs is a list of locales. – Ohalloran

@Ohalloran Yes, that's an explicit invocation of the shell with a variable being defined in that shell script (as that's a shell for loop). That's not at all the same as the %files section expanding shell variables in normal usage. Try using a shell variable from your %build or %install sections in that loop or just using the variable in the %files list directly and you'll see what I mean about it not working. – Tobit