the maven-rpm-plugin should allow users to specify the target architecure. needsarch is insufficient.

I have a fix for this (http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MOJO-1125).

Under <configuaration> you can add a <targetArch> element:

<configuration>
...
<targetArch>x86_64</targetArch>
...

Also, each source element can be filtered by arch as well, like so:

...
<source>
<location>src/main/native/x86_64</location>
<targetArch>x86_64</targetArch>
</source>
<source>
<location>src/main/native/i586</location>
<targetArch>i586</targetArch>
</source>
...

This can be useful if you set a property for your targetArch (e.g. <targetArch>${target_arch}</targetArch>) and then pass the value in during build time.

In order to be a bit more passive, I suggest that we change the behavior of needarch to be more flexible.

If we change needarch to be a string, if the value is "true" or "false" (also note that no value would still be "noarch"), it can work exactly as it does today. However, if the value is anything else (such as "x86_64"), that will be set as the target architecture. (This is similar to how MOJO-1201 was handled).

The idea of filtering the source(s) is interesting. I would assume that a source with no "targetArch" value would always be included. If the target architecture of the rpm is "noarch", should every source match, or only those with no "targetArch"?

Fixed in 2.0-beta-2-SNAPSHOT