Compiling checkinstall for Fedora 13/15/17 x86_64, and for RHEL6 x86_64

It's a pity there isn't just a checkinstall RPM in a repository somewhere, getting this to compile and run under Fedora 13 (x86_64) was a pain. Notes for RHEL6 are at the bottom of this page.

First, get the source, which was version 1.6.2 as of this writing.

Then:
tar zxvf checkinstall-1.6.2.tar.gz
cd checkinstall-1.6.2

If you then run make, as the INSTALL file tells you to do, you run into compilation errors:

installwatch.c:2942: error: conflicting types for 'readlink' /usr/include/unistd.h:828: note: previous declaration of 'readlink' was here installwatch.c:3080: error: conflicting types for 'scandir' /usr/include/dirent.h:252: note: previous declaration of 'scandir' was here installwatch.c:3692: error: conflicting types for 'scandir64' /usr/include/dirent.h:275: note: previous declaration of 'scandir64' was here To fix these, load the file installwatch/installwatch.c into an editor, and modify these lines:

• at line 101, change: static int (*true_scandir)( const char *,struct dirent ***, int (*)(const struct dirent *), int (*)(const void *,const void *)); to: static int (*true_scandir)( const char *,struct dirent ***, int (*)(const struct dirent *), int (*)(const struct dirent **,const struct dirent **)); (i.e. just change the types in the last line from const void * to const struct dirent **)
• at line 121, change: static int (*true_scandir64)( const char *,struct dirent64 ***, int (*)(const struct dirent64 *), int (*)(const void *,const void *)); to: static int (*true_scandir64)( const char *,struct dirent64 ***, int (*)(const struct dirent64 *), int (*)(const struct dirent64 **,const struct dirent64 **)); (i.e. same change with 64 added)
• at line 2941, change:
  #if (GLIBC_MINOR <= 4)
  to:
  #if (0)
• at line 3080, change: int scandir( const char *dir,struct dirent ***namelist, int (*select)(const struct dirent *), int (*compar)(const void *,const void *) ) { to: int scandir( const char *dir,struct dirent ***namelist, int (*select)(const struct dirent *), int (*compar)(const struct dirent **,const struct dirent **) ) {
• at line 3692, change: int scandir64( const char *dir,struct dirent64 ***namelist, int (*select)(const struct dirent64 *), int (*compar)(const void *,const void *) ) { to: int scandir64( const char *dir,struct dirent64 ***namelist, int (*select)(const struct dirent64 *), int (*compar)(const struct dirent64 **,const struct dirent64 **) ) {

Make sure you have rpm-build and rpmdevtools installed:
yum install rpm-build rpmdevtools (as root)

Now, in the checkinstall-1.6.2 directory, run:
make

Next, edit the file checkinstall itself:

• at line 495, change: CHECKINSTALLRC=${CHECKINSTALLRC:-${INSTALLDIR}/checkinstallrc}
  to:
  CHECKINSTALLRC=${CHECKINSTALLRC:-${INSTALLDIR}/lib/checkinstall/checkinstallrc}
• at line 2466, change: $RPMBUILD -bb ${RPM_TARGET_FLAG}${ARCHITECTURE} "$SPEC_PATH" &> ${TMP_DIR}/rpmbuild.log
  to:
  $RPMBUILD -bb ${RPM_TARGET_FLAG}${ARCHITECTURE} --buildroot $BROOTPATH "$SPEC_PATH" &> ${TMP_DIR}/rpmbuild.log

Now, as root, run:
make install

You can now create a checkinstall RPM by running it (note the full path):
/usr/local/sbin/checkinstall

One more error...

As soon as an installation tries to do something with temporary files/directories, checkinstall will fail, for example, when running it for php-5.2.14: Installing PHP CLI binary: /usr/bin/ chmod: changing permissions of `/usr/bin/#INST@10957#': No such file or directory The fix, apparently, is to run checkinstall with the --fstrans=no parameter, so for example:
checkinstall -R -y --fstrans=no

And another...

Roman wrote to me the following (21 October 2011): Another bug, that line occurs in output: cp: cannot stat `//var/tmp/tmp.tcgjDbWwz6/newfiles.tmp': No such file or directory This is due to typo in "checkinstall": it using '/${TMP_DIR}/...' instead '${TMP_DIR}/...' I suggest this fix before making rpm/deb package of checkinstall itself: sed -i '.orig' -e 's/\/${TMP_DIR}/${TMP_DIR}/g' checkinstall

---

Compiling for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6), x86_64

Sean Kenn got checkinstall to work under RHEL6, after these modifications (May 30, 2012) (LINE <nr> refers to the line number in the checkinstall file):

• just to get rid of the tar message that shows up (tar: Removing leading '/' from member names), add the -P option: LINE 471: $TAR --no-recursion -C "${root}" -cphf - $files | $TAR -f - -xvpPC \ LINE 474: $TAR --no-recursion -C "${root}" -cpf - $files | $TAR -f - -xvpPC \
• $INSTALLDIR variable was wrong (This could probably be fixed in the followlinks function but I just wrote the path out on this line): LINE 495: CHECKINSTALLRC=${CHECKINSTALLRC:-/usr/local/lib/checkinstall/checkinstallrc}
• Removed the '/' in front of ${TMP_DIR} on these lines. Also added --buildroot $BROOTPATH: LINE 2466: $RPMBUILD -bb ${RPM_TARGET_FLAG}${ARCHITECTURE} --buildroot $BROOTPATH "$SPEC_PATH" &> ${TMP_DIR}/rpmbuild.log
• I ended up messing with the $truefile variable to get tar the needed files: LINE 1775: $TAR --no-recursion -C "${TRANSLROOT}" -cpPf - "$truefile" \ LINE 1778: $TAR --no-recursion -C "${TRANSLROOT}" -cphPf - "$truefile" \
• Remove line 1770 and insert: echo ${file} | grep symlink > /dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then truefile=`echo ${file} | sed 's/^\.//' | awk '{print $3}'` else truefile=`echo ${file} | sed 's/^\.//' | awk '{print $4}'` fi

---

Another fix, for RHEL/CentOS 6.3

An anonymous reader writes:

New rpm version 4.8.0 shows --version in format "RPM-Version 4.8.0" while former versions had e.g. the format "RPM, Version 4.4.2.3". So there is no $3 for awk and the checkinstall script breaks.

change line 2289 (line number is after applying the patch from Sean Kenn !) from:
RPM_VERSION=`rpm --version | awk '{ print $3 }'`
to:
RPM_VERSION=`rpm --version | sed "s/^.* \([0-9]\)/\1/"

He/she provided a patch: checkinstall-1.6.2.patch_for_RHEL6-x86_64.

---

Another fix, for Fedora 17, x86_64

A user reported that for Fedora 17, x86_64, a line had to be changed in checkinstall-1.6.2/installwatch/Makefile:
line 14, from:
LIBDIR=$(PREFIX)/lib
to
LIBDIR=$(PREFIX)/lib64

Another user reported that this fix was also required for Fedora 15, x86_64. The error message he got when running checkinstall:
ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/local/lib64/installwatch.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

Another checkinstall issue is described in this tip.