When your package is installed, you can control the file attributes as well as the files that get included into the package. This is very useful since most packages are installed by the root user and you don’t always want the root user owning the files.

The %attr directive allows you to control the permissions for a particular file. The format is:

%attr(mode, user, group) filename

For example:

%attr(0644, root, root) /etc/yp.conf

This example sets the file permissions to 644, the user and the group to root. If you don’t need to specify a value, use a dash, -, to leave the setting as is for the file. For example:

%attr(-, root, -) /etc/yp.conf

Note that you can combine directives, one after another. For example:

%config %attr(-, root, -) /etc/yp.conf

You can also use spaces instead of commas as delimiters. For example:

%attr(0700 root root) %dir /var/tux

In addition to using %attr to set the attributes for a file, you should use the %defattr directive to set the default attributes for all files in the package. For example:

%files

%defattr(-,root,root)

/usr/X11R6/bin/xtoolwait

/usr/X11R6/man/man1/xtoolwait.*

Just about every spec file uses the %defattr directive as this directive eliminates a lot of work you need to do to set file attributes individually. In addition, using the %defattr directive is considered a best practice when creating packages.

You can also mark files for a particular language. For example, from the tcsh shell package:

%files

%defattr(-,root,root)

%doc FAQ Fixes NewThings complete.tcsh eight-bit.txt tcsh.html

%{_bindir}/tcsh

%{_bindir}/csh

%{_mandir}/*/*

%lang(de) %{_datadir}/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(el) %{_datadir}/locale/el/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(en) %{_datadir}/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(es) %{_datadir}/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(et) %{_datadir}/locale/et/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(fi) %{_datadir}/locale/fi/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(fr) %{_datadir}/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(it) %{_datadir}/locale/it/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(ja) %{_datadir}/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(pl) %{_datadir}/locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(ru) %{_datadir}/locale/ru/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

%lang(uk) %{_datadir}/locale/uk/LC_MESSAGES/tcsh*

This example marks certain files as only being of use with particular languages, such as ja for the Japanese text and fr for the French text.