How to rebuild an RPM package

This is the 1st time for me to patch and rebuild an RPM package, when I tried to add Unicode Support on CentOS 5.4 with PHP and PCRE. I received some PHP warning message when I had the regex testing characters (‘\X’, ‘\pL’, etc) inside of a character class, such as ‘[\X-]‘. After I googled the Internet, I found that's because the Unicode Support is missing in the PCRE.

Note: This is an example which using PCRE SOURCE RPM package.



Since I downloaded PHP 5.3.1 and compiled manually by enable the configure option:

--with-pcre-regex=/usr

And PHP 5.3.x includes PCRE support built in; however, the yum package for PCRE is not built with Unicode support; so, need to download the rpm and patched according to this page:

http://gaarai.com/2009/01/31/unicode-support-on-centos-52-with-php-and-pcre/

This is needed for Unicode regexp support, so we can do input validation in a variety of character sets.

By default, at least on a Red Hat box, rpm uses /usr/src/redhat as the location of the %_topdir macro, which specifies where most of the work involved in building an RPM takes place.

You can and should change this; it is a good idea to make this a directory that you can write to with a non-privileged account, to avoid compiling and building packages as root.

Why?

A lot of commands get executed when building a package. Sometimes things go wrong. If you're root, important things may be damaged. A big mess may be made. I once (foolishly) rebuilt a proftpd package as root, and the "make install" stage blew up and left newly compiled files all over the place, whereas if I'd been a regular user, I'd have simply gotten a bunch of "permission denied" messages.

1. Anyway, the macro is easily changed by adding something like the following to ~/.rpmmacros:
   
   
   # Path to top of build area
%_topdir /home/you/src/rpm
   
   
   



2. If you have never worked on RPMs in this manner, you will need to create a few directories in which to work. I use a sub-directory in my homedir:
   
   
   #> mkdir -p ~/src/rpm
#> cd ~/src/rpm
#> mkdir BUILD RPMS SOURCES SPECS SRPMS
#> mkdir RPMS/i[3456]86 RPMS/noarch RPMS/athlon
   
   
   



3. Download the PCRE Source RPM, and install it:
   
   
   #> wget ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRPMS/pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.src.rpm

#>rpm -ivh pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.src.rpm
   
   
   Then install the following package from iso image if you didn't install them during the 1st time OS installation:
   
   
   #> rpm -ivh beecrypt-4.1.2-10.1.1.x86_64.rpm rpm-libs-4.4.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm rpm-4.4.2.3-18.el5.x86_64.rpm elfutils-0.137-3.el5.x86_64.rpm elfutils-libs-0.137-3.el5.x86_64.rpm rpm-build-4.4.2.3-18.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
   
   
   



4. Rebuild the PCRE RPM package and reinstall the new PCRE RPM package:
   
   opened up the ~/src/rpm/SPECS/pcre.spec file and found the following line:
   
   
   %configure --enable-utf8
   
   
   changed it to include the Unicode properties option:
   
   
   %configure --enable-utf8 --enable-unicode-properties
   
   
   Then saved and closed the file.
   
   



5. Rebuils the PCR RPM package:
   
   
   #> rpmbuild -ba ~/src/rpm/SPECS/pcre.spec
#> rpm -Uvh RPMS/x86_64/pcre-6.6-2.7.x86_64.rpm RPMS/x86_64/pcre-devel-6.6-2.7.x86_64.rpm –-force
   
   
   




6. Then run pcretest program, and you should see "Unicode properties support" shown in the result.
   
   
   $ pcretest -C
PCRE version 6.6 06-Feb-2006
Compiled with
UTF-8 support
No Unicode properties support
Newline character is LF
Internal link size = 2
POSIX malloc threshold = 10
Default match limit = 10000000
Default recursion depth limit = 10000000
Match recursion uses stack

   
   
   

I also found a very helpful guide that details this process out very nicely: How to patch and rebuild an RPM package.