[Scons-users] RPM packaging with SCons

[Werner Reisberger]

I ran into several problems with the SCons RPM builder as explained in 
previous posts. I couldn't fix this with my basic python knowledge and 
decided to make my own custom solution. With this approach  I was able 
to migrate our make based build pipeline for more than a dozen RPM's to 
SCons. For demonstration purposes you can clone and test this from

    https://github.com/wrbr/sconstest

Basically I decoupled the highly integrated (but inflexible) RPM builder 
into a tar and a template builder (already provided by SCons) and a 
custom builder which calls the rpmbuild tool. With this solution I am 
much more flexible and can adapt easily to the many RPM features if 
required.

It would be better to have a more user friendly, more abstracted 
solution but I don't see this possibility with the given RPM package 
builder. I also don't think that this builder is anywhere used in 
production.

To fix the problems with the given RPM builder would probably require a 
considerable effort even from a good python developer. It would also 
need someone who can maintain this builder which is immportant for a 
complex package format as RPM is.

--Werner