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I have 2 rpms which are packaged at different times with same content. But there is a slight size difference (less than 10 bytes) between these two rpms.

I also tried extracting these rpms to verify its content using command "rpm2cpio ../myrpm.rpm | cpio -idmv". There was no difference in content.

I would like to know what caused to size difference in these rpms when their contents are same. Is it time at which packaging is done. If so, I would like to ignore time factor in generating rpms.

Let me know your suggestion.

Jegan
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1 Answers1

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There are a couple of things that can change the size of the "same" rpm:

  • rpm uses gzip, which is not guaranteed to product the same result each time (Why does the gzip version of files produce a different md5 checksum discusses part of this).
  • rpm stores metadata (including the hostname where the package is built), which is not necessarily the same (dates change also). Since things change, the compressed filesize can change as well.
Community
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Thomas Dickey
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