%changelog

The changelog is often forgotten, but is very useful. In it you put your name, the date, the version you are working on and then freeform, the changes you made. I usually start with - initial build or similar when starting the log. In this case I'm going to put a fake email, but you should really put your real email here (provided you aren't going to post the spec file in it's raw form on the web anywhere, gotta love spammers don't ya?)

%changelog
* Tue Sep 22 2009 Thomas Howard Uphill  - 1.22
- initial build, example spec file

Now, when version 1.23 of tar is released, you would come back and insert a new entry before this one. The most recent modification should come at the top of the changelog (as with all good changelogs). Adding the version to your entry is useful later when you are trying to remember when you made a change to the spec file and for what version you did it.

The spec file is complete and this package will install cleanly on any system. There are several other sections to a spec file that we did not cover. I'll briefly describe them next.