Is it possible to make rpmbuild to preserve symlinks on packaging?
The current behavior is to create copies of files, which I would like to avoid.
Sure it supports symlinks. But you actually have to package symlink and not copy the contents to the buildroot. Example spec packaging a symlink to /bin directory called /newbin
Name: test
Version: 1.0
Release: 1%{?dist}
Summary: nothing
License: GPLv2
Source0: nothing
%description
%install
rm -rf %{buildroot}
mkdir %{buildroot}
ln -sf /bin %{buildroot}/newbin
%files
/newbin
You'll also need nothing file in your SOURCES directory to succesfully build rpm out of this. Tested with rpm 4.9.1.2