I was wondering if there is any way to pass arguments via rpmbuild to the subsequent ./configure script execution, like --help to see the configure options available, or to have one thing or two optimized. Is it possible to do that? if so whith which flag(s). Currently I am working on a project which would make sense to release as .rpm, src.rpm, and tgz. Problem is that I'm making the src.rpm right off the tgz, which has a bunch of options passed to the configure script, I'd like to have that same functionality (not building useless stuff, and the viceversa) to the src.rpm, but I seem unable to do that, I've built one to try, but I simply cannot find the arguments to pass to the configure script, and even more the behavior tends to be erratic, sometimes the built rpm has everything configured into the binaries, and other times it simply builds the most basic stack of them! So I would like to be able to pass the arguments to the src.rpm just like you would with the configure. I am writing this program for a little company who happens to use only RedHat and want to be able to "custom" build the package as needed, as well as pure binary packages, hence the three flavors, in tgz I develop, and plan to ship in src.rpm and rpm...

... Maybe I just said pure useless things, but I am getting quite frustrated, and the how to's and web references in rpm don't seem to answer this question. Any info, as usual will be must appreciated

Don't have an answer friend but I just bought Maximum-RPM, it is also available as a freely downloadable doc from here: http://www.redhat.com/docs/books/max-rpm/max-rpm-html/

Also you can get on the freshrpms mailing list, those folks may have an answer. Join here: http://freshrpms.net/lists/

Good Luck.

Thanks anyway, I'll do that...

Well, there's two ways.
First you got the "%configure" statement after %prep and %setup you could pass options to:

%configure \
--prefix=${RPM_BUILD_ROOT}/usr \
--with-weirdass-args=no \
make

Trying to pass "--help" is useless because that wouldn't result in making a proper Makefile.

The second way is to shove it all under "%build":
%build
./configure \
--prefix=${RPM_BUILD_ROOT}/usr \
--keep-pieces-when-broken=yes \
make

Wow! Thank your unSpawn. So how would I actually pass the ./configure args during rebuild?

Uh. Forgot to explain my examples are used in actual spec files. Should put configure options there.

I haven't tested in what way rpm cleans the subshell environment, so exporting BUILDFLAGS="--prefix=${RPM_BUILD_ROOT}/usr --keep-pieces-when-broken=yes " and in the specfile having
" ./configure %{BUILDFLAGS}" *could* work, else you may have to wedge in a %define.

Thanks again, unSpawn. My goal is to give the src.rpm as many options as the configure script found in regular sources, so that the final rpm gets compiled tailored the same way as the configure with the convenience of the rpm file format for installation-package administration.