There are two very useful scripts in SPECS module. One is called builder, second is adapter.awk.

builder can be used to: Fetch spec file along with tarballs, patches, icons etc from CVS repository, or if they are not stored there, from http/ftp URLs. In order just to fetch files needed for build use -g option. If you don't want to fetch Source0 (that is usually the hugest), use -ns0 option. Build binary and/or source RPMS. Use it without option, or with -bs or -bb to do this. It is used this on builder machines in PLD Linux. Tag all files that constitutes package. Using -T family of options one can add tags not only for spec file, but also for patches and sources. Note that having tags on all files in package is required to make it build using -r builder option. Even if you don't use builder -r PLD builders does.

adapter.awk is tool fixing common mistakes in spec files, and making them all look the same. There are some style guidelines in PLD concerning spec files. They are mostly formalized through few thousand examples in SPECS module and adapter.awk script. While this probably isn't very good way of formalization, this is how it works -- it is simply recommended to run specs through adapter.awk before doing commit. adapter.awk reads spec file passed as first argument or, if nothing is passed, standard input. Processed spec is dumped on standard output. For example, let's say you finally completed great foo.spec: [you@somewhere SPECS]$ ./adapter.awk foo.spec > foo.spec- [you@somewhere SPECS]$ diff -u foo.spec foo.spec- ... [you@somewhere SPECS]$ mv foo.spec- foo.spec [you@somewhere SPECS]$ cvs commit foo.spec You always should look at what adapter.awk broke^H^H^H^H^Hchanged. It is just a piece of awk and it is sometimes misled. Thats what's diff above is for. If you use vim to edit spec files you might find useful its diff mode, instead of using diff command. Simply instead of diff -u foo.spec foo.spec- run vim -d foo.spec foo.spec-. FIXME: There is probably something similar in operating system Emacs.