As I tried to make some rpm packages with checkinstall-1.6.0beta4-10 and rpm-4.4.2-9 (both included in SuSE Linux 10.1 Beta1) I found some incompatibilities and other problems.

1) Copyright tag not valid in RPM-4.4

At first, checkinstall creates a SPEC file with the tag "Copyright:". This tag is not valid any more in RPM-4.4 and is reported as an error:

  error: Legacy syntax is unsupported: copyright
  error: line 5: Unknown tag: Copyright: GPL

"License" is the new "Copyright" tag.
  
2) RPM complains about unpacked file(s)

RPM complains about unpacked file(s) when used together with checkinstall:

  Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /var/soft/missing-libraries/buildroot
  error: Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:

But the unpackaged file list is empty.

3) Checkinstall produces a badly formatted %files list in RPM-spec:

The %files list produced by checkinstall is badly formatted, e.g.

%files
%dir "//usr/"
%dir "//usr/lib/"
%dir "//usr/lib/libexpat.so.0"
"//usr/lib/libexpat.so.0.5.0"

4) Syntax problem in "Requires:" tag

The "Requires:" tag produced by checkinstall has a syntax problem (extra ","), e.g.:

Requires:  ,/bin/sh

Testing:

I attached an example installation script. The script could be tested together with a library:

  $ ls -l
  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root      188 Jan 31 20:56 install-rpm
  lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       17 Jan 31 20:47 libexpat.so.0 -> libexpat.so.0.5.0
  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root   127428 Sep  9 17:58 libexpat.so.0.5.0

Now checkinstall could be tested with:

  $ checkinstall ./install-rpm

You will see the errors after filling the required the fields, e.g.

  This package will be built according to these values:

  1 -  Summary: [ Package created with checkinstall 1.6.0beta4 ]
  2 -  Name:    [ missing-libs ]
  3 -  Version: [ 20050131 ]
  4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
  5 -  License: [ GPL ]
  6 -  Group:   [ Applications/System ]
  7 -  Architecture: [ i386 ]
  8 -  Source location: [ missing-libraries ]
  9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
 10 - Provides: [ missing ]
 11 - Requires: [ ,/bin/sh ]