In my last post I demonstrated compiling Ruby from source and building an RPM for it using FPM.

This works great and it's a major timesaver, but FPM allows you to take this one step further and even build RPMs out of Ruby Gems.

Here's how I did it:

1. Install my repository, then install Ruby plus the usual suspects for building RPM packages:

yum -y install http://rpm.chaidas.com/rpm.chaidas.com-0.1-1.x86_64.rpm
yum -y install ruby make rpm-build gcc

2. Install the FPM gem:

gem install fpm --no-ri --no-rdoc

3. Use FPM to convert the FPM gem into an RPM:

fpm -s gem -t rpm fpm

Explanation for the above:

-s gem = the source is a gem

-t rpm = the target is an RPM

fpm = the name of the gem we're converting

4. Now that the RPM is created, check what the dependencies are:

rpm -qp rubygem-fpm-1.9.2-1.noarch.rpm --requires
rubygem(json) < 2.0
rubygem(json) >= 1.7.7
rubygem(cabin) >= 0.6.0
rubygem(backports) >= 2.6.2
rubygem(arr-pm) >= 0.0.10
rubygem(arr-pm) < 0.1.0
rubygem(clamp) >= 1.0.0
rubygem(clamp) < 1.1.0
rubygem(childprocess) >= 0
rubygem(ffi) >= 0
rubygem(ruby-xz) >= 0
rubygem(pleaserun) >= 0.0.29
rubygem(pleaserun) < 0.1.0
rubygem(stud) >= 0
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1

As you can see there's a bunch of them - don't worry! we can convert them too! (buhuahuaha)

5. Download all the gem dependencies (without installing them though!):

mkdir /tmp/gems
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc --install-dir /tmp/gems fpm

6. Make RPMs out of all gems (this command is totally stolen from the awesome FPM docs):

cd /tmp/gems

7. I want some more dependencies for the fpm RPM. Namely the 'rpm-build' and 'make' packages - I'll add those and rebuild it:

fpm -d ruby-lampros -d rpm-build -d make -s gem -t rpm fpm

8. Create a local repo and copy all the RPMs in there - we'll use this for testing:

yum install createrepo -y
mkdir -pv /yumrepo
# the next command simply copies all the *.rpm files into the /yumrepo/ directory:
for i in `find /tmp/ -name "*.rpm"`; do echo $i; cp $i /yumrepo/; done
createrepo /yumrepo

9. Create a repository definition - /etc/yum.repos.d/lampros-gems.repo:

[lampros-gems-repo]
name=Lampros Gems
baseurl=file:///yumrepo
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

10. Remove Ruby etc, so that we can test installing the RPM gems:

yum -y remove ruby\*

11. Get the list of available packages from our new repository:

yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=lampros-gems-repo list available

You should get output like this:

Available Packages
rubygem-arr-pm.noarch 0.0.10-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-backports.noarch 3.8.0-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-cabin.noarch 0.9.0-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-childprocess.noarch 0.7.1-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-clamp.noarch 1.0.1-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-dotenv.noarch 2.2.1-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-ffi.x86_64 1.9.18-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-fpm.noarch 1.9.2-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-insist.noarch 1.0.0-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-io-like.noarch 0.3.0-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-json.x86_64 1.8.6-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-mustache.noarch 0.99.8-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-pleaserun.noarch 0.0.30-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-ruby-xz.noarch 0.2.3-1 lampros-gems-repo
rubygem-stud.noarch 0.0.23-1 lampros-gems-repo

12. Try to install FPM:

yum -y install rubygem-fpm

13. Did it work?

fpm --version
1.9.2

Yes sir!

Sources: