rpmbuild %clean phase without removing files

rpm, rpmbuild

Solution

Turns out I just needed to provide my own `%clean` directive in the spec file and leave it blank to override the default. For some reason I didn't expect that to work. ;)

A define can conditionalize the %Clean% phase so that the same effect as `--noclean` can be achieved.

%Clean
%if "%{noclean}" == ""
   rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%endif

Called with `rpmbuild --define 'noclean 1'` to disable cleaning.

Problem

I am getting the following in my build log: ``` Executing(%clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.CgE2Qn + umask 022 + cd /export/home/svn_checkouts/*snip*/Output/release/bin/packaging/BUILD + /bin/rm -rf /export/home/svn_checkouts/*snip*/Output/release/bin + exit 0 ``` I'd like to avoid `rpmbuild` deleting all the files in my build directory as I need them for other things after the RPM is built. Can I override this behavior? I read that some versions of RPM support a `--noclean` argument, but ours doesn't unfortunately.

Original source