Rpmbuild changes current directory

Question

Having failures to build RPM using some spec file which works great for other users, I found out that it for some reason changes the current directory to rpmbuild/BUILD:

+ umask 022
+ cd /home/dev1/rpmbuild/BUILD
+ LANG=C
+ export LANG
+ unset DISPLAY

For other users on same machine exactly, it stays in the directory it was launched, and able to find the required files, so it works fine.

I double checked my .rpmmacros, and the only entry is the topdir pointing to rpmbuild directory.

The SPEC file is:

Summary: core package
Name: core
Version: 2
Release: 1
Group: Applications
License: Commercial
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)

%description
Core package

%prep

%build

%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/Core
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/Core/etc
install -m 755 dist/Core.jar $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/Core/
install -m 755 dist/launch.sh    $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/Core/
install -m 755 dist/etc/configuration.conf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/Core/etc/

%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
/Core/Core.jar
/Core/launch.sh
%config(noreplace) /Core/etc/configuration.conf

%preun
mv /Core/etc/configuration.conf /Core/etc/configuration.conf.bak

%postun
rm -f /Core/Core.jar
rm -f /Core/launch.sh

Any idea, what can be causing rpmbuild to switch the current directory?

Thanks!

Answer 1

topdir in .rpmmacros indicates where your software should be built, rpmbuild recommends to build your programs in a separate dir to avoid crossing streams with live files, which is normally a good behaviour.

If you wanna remove this behaviour just remove topdir from .rpmmacros although I don't recommend this.

It could easily be that the SPEC file depends on some enviroment variable that is not set in your user but set on the others, you should compare and see if that's the case, if it's so add this env variable to the SPEC file.

So in one word, I think the SPEC is to blame for somehow missing this, if you paste the SPEC around here I can have a look and try to find the issue for you