using jenkins to build RPM packages

• You can install Jenkins on a different machine, but you generally must have a Jenkins "node", "slave", "agent" installed on a machine that can generate RPM packages.

• Running each step of the RPM package setup is putting all the steps to build within Jenkins. It works much better if you extend your build system to build the RPM, and have Jenkins do what it does best, manage the build (schedule, etc), not micro-manage the build (do the steps).

Depending on what you currently have as your build system, this might include ant directives to setup the rpm build tree, copy in the .spec file, and a executable call to rpmbuild.

• Jenkins can easily call a post-build task to do this, or you might want to configure a mini "fake" project that does the update, depending on tastes.

As an aside, for a yum command to work without using the --localinstall option, you will need to have a web server set up, the new RPM copied to the right folder on the web server, and the indexing files rebuilt (repobuild is the script to do so, if I recall correctly).

On the client machine (where the package will be installed), you will need to have a yum configuration that directs the client machine to include the web server as one of the known yum repositories.

Why not use an Docker images to build the RPM inside it though a dedicated stage ?Your code needs to provide /rpm/SPEC files and inside the Docker (Jenkins) you can have a Jenkinsfile like :

mkdir -p ./rpm/BUILD && cd ./rpm/ && for f in ./SPECS/*; do rpmbuild --define \"_topdir \$(pwd)/\" --define \"_builddir \$(pwd)/BUILD\" -bb \$f;

And you are done.