%description

A full description of the software packaged in the RPM. This description can span multiple lines and can be broken into paragraphs.

%prep

A command or series of commands to prepare the software for building, for example, for unpacking the archive in the Source directive. The %prep directive can contain a shell script.

%conf

A command or series of commands to configure the software for building.

%build

A command or series of commands for building the software into machine code (for compiled languages) or bytecode (for some interpreted languages).

%install

A command or series of commands that the rpmbuild utility will use to install the software into the BUILDROOT directory once the software has been built. These commands copy the build artifacts from the %_builddir directory, where the build happens, to the %buildroot directory that contains the directory structure with the files to be packaged. This includes copying files from ~/rpmbuild/BUILD to ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT and creating the necessary directories in ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT.

The %buildroot directory is an empty base directory, which resembles the end user’s system directory layout. In %buildroot, you can create any directories that will contain the installed files. To create such directories, you can use RPM macros without having to hardcode the paths.

Note that %install is only run when you create a package, not when you install it. For more information, see Working with spec files.

%check

A command or series of commands for testing the software, for example, unit tests.

%files

A list of files, provided by the RPM package, to be installed in the user’s system and their full path location on the system.

During the build, if there are files in the %buildroot directory that are not listed in %files, you will receive a warning about possible unpackaged files.

Within the %files section, you can indicate the role of various files by using built-in macros. This is useful for querying the package file manifest metadata by using the rpm command. For example, to indicate that the LICENSE file is a software license file, use the %license macro.

%changelog

A record of changes that happened to the package between different Version or Release builds. These changes include a list of date-stamped entries for each Version-Release of the package. These entries log packaging changes, not software changes, for example, adding a patch or changing the build procedure in the %build section.