checkinstall vs rpmbuild
 

im about to compile a program from source but i want to package it as an rpm first so i can use MDK's package manager to keep track of it. it seems to me that checkinstall and rpmbuild both do the same thing, which is to make a .rpm from source. is there any signicant differences between these 2 options? which one is better?

If you're builiding RPMs, I'm guessing the answer is that there isn't much difference. Rpmbuild can work directly with .src.rpm files, but I'm guessing that really isnt' much of an advantage. Personally I've used checkinstall with great success, but then I run Slackware and rpmbuild isn't going to do me much good.