[ale] RPM binaries?

[JK]

timothy at meanor.net wrote:

> You can define %_topdir in .rpmmacros to specify your own build directory (where the subdirectories RPMS, SRPMS, SRC, BUILD, and SPECS are found).
> e.g. %_topdir /home/joeblow/rpms

I tried that, using /home/joe/prg/rpms as %_topdir,
but something pretty weird happens:

[joe at orado prg]$ rpmbuild -ba /home/joe/prg/rpms/SPECS/libsmi.spec
error: File : /home/joe/prg/rpms/SOURCES/libsmi-0.4.2.tar.gz: No such file or 
directory
# but the file is totally there...
[joe at orado prg]$ ls -al /home/joe/prg/rpms/SOURCES/
total 2884
drwxrwxr-x  2 joe joe    4096 Feb  2 03:26 .
drwxrwxr-x  7 joe joe    4096 Feb  1 08:41 ..
-rwxrw-r--  1 joe joe 2925903 Feb  2 03:26 libsmi-0.4.2.tar.gz
[joe at orado prg]$

When I try this as root (after copying the spec and source
files to the appropriate places in /usr/src/redhat/),
everything works.

WTF?

Thanks,

-- Joe