Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Source rpms are not actually rpms which installs automatically (by <rpm - command> or package manager). But these are the packed/zipped/packed source codes of the packages which can be extracted to folder and then you can compile the source code as per your choice and then install them.
in case of tarball it is also a another kind of packed archieve.
in both the cases we have to unpack them to a folder and then process further.
When you install a source rpm, there will be a <package>.spec in the SPECS directory, and a tarball and patches in the SOURCES directory.
There are different phases that you can perform with a source RPM file, from %prep to %install. For example, if you run the command 'rpmbuild -bp <package>.spec', this will apply the patches. Then there is a directory in the BUILD directory that is the same as you would have if you had downloaded the same version tarball.
You can use another 'rpmbuild' command to perform the install. Actually, if you wanted to install it you would use this instead of 'rpmbuild -bp' at the start.
Here is a tip that might interest you. Suppose that you want to learn programming in the bash shell, and you want to print out the bashref manual. Install the bash-<version>.src.rpm package. Then apply the patches (sometimes the documents will change also) with 'rpmbuild -bp bash.spec' while in the SPECS directory. ( /usr/src/redhat/SPECS or sometimes /usr/src/packages/SPECS)
Then cd to the BUILD directory: cd ../BUILD
cd to the bash-<version>/ directory
cd bash-3.0/
Now run ./configure to produce a Makefile
./configure
Since bash is already installed, we don't need to make it. There are targets for the documentation.
make dvi
or
make pdf
or
make ps
Now the documentation you generated is in the doc/ subdirectory.
Because the documentation is being built from the sgml or tex source, the document produced is much better than what 'info bash' produces on the screen.
FYI, it's 154 pages long.
There are similar manuals you can generate from the coreutils package, the find package, the tar package and others. For very common programs, having a 3 ring binder for reference is a great aid.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.