Can I use rpm to expand the macros in a specfile?

Question

The concrete example being I have lots of specfiles with Source0: or other Source lines containing macros. How can I have these macros expanded without actually starting a build on the specfile or writing my own parser?

Answer 1

Since rpm 4.9 you can use:

rpmspec -P <spec_file>

This will print out expanded spec file on stdout

Answer 2

If its only the source lines you need parsed, spectool will do that for you. It's part of Fedora's rpmdevtools.

$ spectool ./mg.spec 
Source0: http://homepage.boetes.org/software/mg/mg-20110120.tar.gz
$ 

Here's its help screen

Usage: spectool [<options>] <specfile>
Options:
operating mode:
-l, --lf, --list-files        lists the expanded sources/patches (default)
-g, --gf, --get-files         gets the sources/patches that are listed with
                              a URL
-h, --help                    display this help screen

files on which to operate:
-A, --all                     all files, sources and patches (default)
-S, --sources                 all sources
-P, --patches                 all patches
-s, --source x[,y[,...]]      specified sources
-p, --patch a[,b[,...]]       specified patches

misc:
-d, --define 'macro value'    defines RPM macro 'macro' to be 'value'
-C, --directory dir           download into specified directory (default '.')
-R, --sourcedir               download into rpm's %{_sourcedir}
-n, --dryrun, --dry-run       don't download anything, just show what would be
                              done
-D, --debug                   output debug info, don't clean up when done