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Exam objective 2.211.2 has a weight of 1, and verifies that candidates are able to build a software package. This includes building or rebuilding both RPM and DEB software packages. The first thing you need to build an RPM package is a copy of the source code that can be compiled into the program, or group of programs, that you want to include in your RPM package. You need to apply all the patches, and verify that it compiles correctly on your system. Then you need to construct a spec file. This is a text file that specifies everything in the package and just how it is to be installed. Its name is similar to the package name itself. It begins with a package name, then has the version number, the release number, and ends with a file suffix, dot spec. The text in this file has a specific purpose and a definite format. The first section is called the Header, which contains some specific information about the package, such as the copyright, the group the software is from, the home location of the source code; then comes the description section, which is a free-form textual description of the software. Then the action starts. The Prep section contains commands that need to be executed to get the source ready to be compiled and prepare the Make file; apply patches to the source; whatever. Next is the Build section. This includes any commands needed to build the software from the unpacked and ready source. After Build comes Install. This section contains whatever commands you need to execute to put the files where they should go and to set things up for execution. Those are all the actions, but there is some more information you need to include. You need to list the files that the package installs, and you need to include the change log that lists the changes that were made to produce the package. The command that actually builds the package is called RPM Build. You feed it the spec file and specify some options and it will build either a source package or a binary package, or both. The process for building a Debian package is very much the same. The same information is required but the format is different. The first thing you need, of course, is the compilable source. Instead of a single spec file, the information about the package is kept in multiple files, but these files are all constructed automatically when the package is constructed by setting things up correctly and running the program DHMake. This program constructs the files and builds the package. It has a number of parameters that you can use to control the contents of the package to be produced. The program will prompt you for input, also, and you can decide what kind of package to build. You need to go through the details to see how packages are built. If you go to this Web site, you can see an example of the spec file, along with a description of all its parts. You can see all the options and the different ways of running RPM Build by reading its MAN page. If you don't have a MAN page on your system, you could find it easily in several places on the Internet. You can see the details required for constructing a Debian package at this Web site. The DH Make program has lots of options and requires the source to be in specific directories. All these details can be found in the MAN pages.