jordansissel/fpm — Issue #117: fpm creates rpms without -RELEASE number in the file name
Author: bknowles
Created: 2011-11-07 23:53:12+00:00
State: open

So, it seems that fpm can create rpms that do not have a -RELEASE number in the file name, although internally the rpm does actually have a RELEASE number that is created.

So, you can use fpm to create an rpm called "foo-1.45.noarch.rpm", and put that in your repo, run the createrepo command, etc.... But when you look at the rpm internally, it looks like this:

% rpm -qpi foo-1.45.noarch.rpm
Name : foo Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 1.45 Vendor: (none)
Release : 1 Build Date: Mon 31 Oct 2011 07:23:01 PM UTC
Install Date: (not installed) Build Host: ubuntu
Group : default Source RPM: foo-1.45-1.src.rpm
Size : 0 License: unknown
Signature : (none)
URL : http://nourlgiven.example.com/no/url/given
Summary : Sample one-line summary
Description :
Sample one-line summary

From what I can tell, fpm has an optional parameter called --iteration which corresponds to the rpm RELEASE number, and rpmbuild and rpmlint both require that the RELEASE number be specified and greater than zero. At the very least, whatever is built internally for the rpm should be reflected in the actual name of the rpm, thus reducing confusion on the part of the people trying to install specific versions of rpms.

Thanks!