bdist_rpm

Creating RPM packages

The RPM format is used by many popular Linux distributions, including Red Hat, SuSE, and Mandrake. If one of these (or any of the other RPM-based Linux distributions) is your usual environment, creating RPM packages for other users of that same distribution is trivial. Depending on the complexity of your module distribution and differences between Linux distributions, you may also be able to create RPMs that work on different RPM-based distributions.

The usual way to create an RPM of your module distribution is to run the bdist_rpm command:

python setup.py bdist_rpm

The command allows you to specify RPM-specific options:

python setup.py bdist_rpm --packager="John Doe <jdoe@example.org>"

Creating RPM packages is driven by a .spec file, much as using the cx_Freeze is driven by the setup script. To make your life easier, the bdist_rpm command normally creates a .spec file based on the information you supply in the setup script, on the command line, and in any cx_Freeze configuration files. Various options and sections in the .spec file are derived from options in the setup script as follows:

cx_Freeze setup script option

RPM .spec file option or section
name

Name
description

Summary (in preamble)
version

Version
license

Copyright
url

Url
long_description

%description (section)

Additionally, there are many options in .spec files that don’t have corresponding options in the setup script. Most of these are handled through options to the bdist_rpm command as follows:

bdist_rpm option

RPM .spec file option or section

default value
distribution_name

Distribution

(none)
group

Group

“Development/Libraries”
release

Release

“1”
serial

Serial

“1”
vendor

Vendor

maintainer or author from setup script
packager

Packager

(none)
provides

Provides

(none)
requires

Requires

(none)
conflicts

Conflicts

(none)
obsoletes

Obsoletes

(none)
build_requires

BuildRequires

(none)
icon

Icon

(none)

Obviously, supplying even a few of these options on the command line would be tedious and error-prone, so it’s usually best to put them in the pyproject.toml configuration file — see section Setup script.

There are three steps to building a binary RPM package, all of which are handled automatically by the cx_Freeze:

  1. create a .spec file, which describes the package (analogous to the cx_Freeze setup script; in fact, much of the information in the setup script winds up in the .spec file).

  2. build an executable or set of executables

  3. create the “binary” RPM

If you wish, you can separate these three steps. You can use the --spec-only option to make bdist_rpm just create the .spec file and exit; in this case, the .spec file will be written to the “distribution directory”—normally dist/, but customizable with the --dist-dir option. (Normally, the .spec file winds up deep in the “build tree,” in a temporary directory created by bdist_rpm.)