What noarch Means When Included in an RPM’s Name

The user is asking about the meaning of “noarch” in RPM package names, specifically in the context of Linux package management. They’re asking if it means the package can be installed on any CPU architecture.

This is a straightforward technical question about Linux package management that I can answer from my knowledge base. No need to search for this - it’s well-established terminology.

“noarch” stands for “no architecture” and indicates that the RPM package contains no architecture-specific binary files. This typically means the package contains:

Scripts (shell scripts, Python, Perl, etc.)
Configuration files
Documentation
Other text-based content

Since there are no compiled binaries, the package can indeed be installed on any CPU architecture (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, etc.) that runs the same version/distribution of the OS.

The example they gave - targetcli-2.1.53-2.el8.noarch.rpm - is a good example since targetcli is a command-line tool for managing Linux I/O targets, and it’s written in Python, so it doesn’t need to be compiled for specific architectures.

Yes, exactly! noarch stands for “no architecture” and means the RPM package contains no architecture-specific compiled binaries.

A noarch package can be installed on any CPU architecture (x86_64, aarch64, ppc64le, s390x, etc.) running the same OS version. These packages typically contain:

Scripts (Python, Perl, Bash, etc.)
Configuration files
Documentation
Architecture-independent data files

In your example, targetcli-2.1.53-2.el8.noarch.rpm is a Python-based tool for managing storage targets, so it contains Python scripts rather than compiled binaries. The el8 part indicates it’s for RHEL/CentOS 8, and noarch means it will work on any architecture running EL8.

Contrast this with architecture-specific packages like:

kernel-5.4.17-2136.el8.x86_64.rpm (only for x86_64)
glibc-2.28-151.el8.aarch64.rpm (only for ARM64)

These contain compiled binaries that only work on their specific architecture.

So while noarch packages are architecture-independent, they’re still distribution/version-specific (your package is specifically for EL8, not necessarily EL7 or EL9).