Creating Python RPM

python linux rpm rpmbuild checkinstall
chrisg picture chrisg · Feb 24, 2010 · Viewed 9.2k times · Source

I have been reading about creating an RPM for Python 2.6.4. In this page: http://docs.python.org/distutils/builtdist.html it says you can create an RPM of the current Python using python setup.py bdist_rpm. The question's I have are:

  • Do you have to type this command in your Python installation directory?
  • Does this command, package all the modules you have installed into the RPM?
  • Is this the correct command to do this?
  • Are there any other suggestion's that would make this easier?

Okay I sorted this out using checkinstall.

I downloaded checkinstall from http://www.asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/.

I then installed the package but had to enter /usr/local/sbin/checkinstall into my PATH to make it work. I then entered the next copmmand to get my RPM directory going.

 yum install rpm-build

I then cd into the Python module and entered this command:

 checkinstall -R --nodoc --delspec=no  --exclude=/selinux python2.6 ./setup.py install

This command replaces the command checkinstall as your installing python libraries through setup.py instead of an ordinary make.

I then went through the checkinstall process. The finished RPM was placed into /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/.

Note: THIS IS FOR LINUX RED HAT.

Answer

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams picture Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Feb 24, 2010
  1. This command has to be typed wherever your setup.py is located.
  2. It packages everything that would show up in a bdist tarball.
  3. Err... sort of. While it works, the package it creates is not of very high quality. It's better to use sdist_rpm, then unpack the resulting SRPM and then apply your distro's Python packaging guidelines to the generated spec file.
  4. Get it to work via bdist first. That way any issues that crop up will be more manageable.

Related questions

open() in Python does not create a file if it doesn't exist

What is the best way to open a file as read/write if it exists, or if it does not, then create it and open it as read/write? From what I read, file = open('myfile.dat', 'rw') should do …

Read More
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x9c

I have a socket server that is supposed to receive UTF-8 valid characters from clients. The problem is some clients (mainly hackers) are sending all the wrong kind of data over it. I can easily distinguish the genuine client, but …

Read More
Install tkinter for Python

I am trying to import Tkinter. However, I get an error stating that Tkinter has not been installed: ImportError: No module named _tkinter, please install the python-tk package I could probably install it using synaptic manager (can I?), however, I …

Read More