rdopkg is a RPM packaging automation tool which was written to efortlessly keep packages in sync with (fast moving) upstream.

rdopkg is a little opinionated, but when you setup your environment right, most packaging tasks are reduced to a single rdopkg command:

• Introduce/remove patches: rdopkg patch
• Rebase patches on a new upstream version: rdopkg new-version

rdopkg builds upon the concept distgit which simply refers to maintaining RPM package source files in a git repository. For example, all Fedora and CentOS packages are maintained in distgit.

Using Version Control System for packaging is great, so rdopkg extends this by requiring patches to be also maintained using git as opposed to storing them as simple .patch files in distgit.

For this purpose, rdopkg introduces concept of patches branch which is simply a git branch containing… yeah, patches. Specifically, patches branch contains upstream git tree with optional downstream patches on top.

In other words, patches are maintained as git commits. The same way they are managed upstream. To introduce new patch to a package, just git cherry-pick it to patches branch and let rdopkg patch do the rest. Patch files are generated from git, .spec file is changed automatically.

When new version is released upstream, rdopkg can rebase patches branch on new version and update distgit automatically. Instead of hoping some .patch files apply on ever changing tarball, git can be used to rebase the patches which brings many advantages like automatically dropping patches already included in new release and more.

Requirements

upstream repo requirements

You project needs to be maintained in a git repository and use Semantic Versioning tags for its releases, such as 1.2.3 or v1.2.3.

distgit

Fedora packages already live in distgit repos which packagers can get by

fedpkg clone package

If your package doesn’t have a distgit yet, simply create a git repository and put all the files from .src.rpm SOURCES in there.

el7 distgit branch is used in following example.

patches branch

Finally, you need a repository to hold your patches branches. This can be the same repo as distgit or a different one. You can use various processes to manage your patches branches, simplest one being packager maintaining them manually like he would with .patch files.

el7-patches patches branch is used in following example.

install rdopkg

rdopkg page contains installation instructions. Most likely, this will do:

dnf install rdopkg

Initial setup

Start with cloning distgit:

git clone $DISTGIT cd $PACKAGE

Add patches remote which contains/is going to contain patches branches (unless it’s the same as origin):

git remote add -f patches $PATCHES_BRANCH_GIT

While optional, it’s strongly recommended to also add upstream remote with project upstream to allow easy initial patches branch setup, cherry-picking and some extra rdopkg automagic detection:

git remote add -f upstream $UPSTREAM_GIT

Clean .spec

In this example we’ll assume we’ll building a package for EL 7 distribution and will use el7 branch for our distgit:

git checkout el7

Clean the .spec file. Replace hardcoded version strings (especially in URL) with macros so that .spec is current when Version changes. Check rdopkg pkgenv to see what rdopkg thinks about your package:

editor foo.spec rdopkg pkgenv git commit -a

Prepare patches branch

By convention, rdopkg expects $BRANCH distgit branch to have appropriate $BRANCH-patches patches branch.

Thus, for our el7 distgit, we need to create el7-patches branch.

First, see current Version::

rdopkg pkgenv | grep Version

Assume our package is at Version: 1.2.3.

upstream remote should contain associated 1.2.3 version tag which should correspond to 1.2.3 release tarball so let’s use that as a base for our new patches branch:

git checkout -b el7-patches 1.2.3

Finally, if you have some .patch files in your el7 distgit branch, you need to apply them on top el7-patches now.

Some patches might be present in upstream remote (like backports) so you can git cherry-pick them.

Once happy with your patches on top of 1.2.3, push your patches branch into the patches remote:

git push patches el7-patches

Update distgit

With el7-patches patches branch in order, try updating your distgit:

git checkout el7 rdopkg patch

If this fails, you can try lower-level rdopkg update-patches which skips certain magics but isn’t reccommended normal usage.

Once this succeeds, inspect newly created commit that updated the .spec file and .patch files from el7-patches patches branch.

Ready to rdopkg

After this, you should be able to manage your package using rdopkg.

Please note that both rdopkg patch and rdopkg new-version will reset local el7-patches to remote patches/el7-patches unless you supply -l/--local-patches option.

To introduce/remove patches, simply modify remote el7-patches patches branch and let rdopkg patch do the rest:

rdopkg patch

To update your package to new upstream version including patches rebase:

git fetch --all rdopkg new-version

Finally, if you just want to fix your .spec file without touching patches:

rdopkg fix # edit .spec rdopkg -c

More information

List all rdopkg actions with:

rdopkg -h

Most rdopkg actions have some handy options, see them with

rdopkg $ACTION -h

Read the friendly manual:

man rdopkg

You can also read RDO packaging guide which contains some examples of rdopkg usage in RDO.

Happy packaging!