using rpms for non-root installs

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2013-01-30 at 15:53 -0800, Jorge Gallegos wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 04:06:35PM -0600, Mátyás Selmeci wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > This may be a long shot, but I am interested in repackaging some RPMs (for
> > example, some of the Globus packages in EPEL, as well as grid software that my
> > group builds) such that the software in them may be installed by unprivileged
> > users, or into a non-standard location such as an NFS share. I'd like to use
> > existing RPMs, preferably binaries, as a starting point to avoid duplicating
> > work. (Naturally a lot of post-install scripting would be needed to fix
> > binaries such that they'd work with the path they were installed into).
> 
> Going out on a limb here but, probably you can use yum --installroot,
> sorta like mock does.

You may also want to look up the old-as-dirt --relocate parameter to
RPM. You could try using it, and watch it explode in more cases than
not. But RPM packages are (or were) (at least in theory) supposed to be
relocatable whenever this is practical, and all the machinery is still
there, buried in the tools and spec format...
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net