Creating desktop-background slideshows is easy. Creating RPMs, not so much. At least not when the closest thing to a formal education in anything close to computer science is a few lessons on how to use spreadsheets and databases—and move a turtle!—on a BBC Micro back in the nineties. Which is why great resources like the Fedora wiki are so important to those of us stumbling around, learning things as we need them, trying to create something useful.

I first read the packaging how-to a few months ago, but no matter what I tried to do with the spec for Create Background Slideshow, I just could not get the thing to build. This time around, the section on doing the installation by hand inspired me to avoid calling the setup script and rewrite it in the spec file instead. This was just what was needed, and at long last, I was able to see it build without errors. It took a second test installation in a virtual machine to realise I needed to add update-desktop-database in a %post section—fortunately, the time needed for a second revision was far less than for version one.

I still need to figure out repositories to allow automatic updates, and, as with the deb package, the approach I’ve taken can probably be improved upon, but, for now, I’m counting installation without having to run the setup script as a small victory. The next big task is a set of UI changes, paring down the number of widgets while increasing the options. It’s going to involve a fair bit of work, but I think I can get version 0.9.9 out at some point in October.

The most recent RPM for Create Background Slideshow can always be found at http://www.obfuscatepenguin.net/source/crebs.rpm. If you’re after the latest source RPM, look here: http://www.obfuscatepenguin.net/source/crebs.src.rpm.