rpmbuild/rpm not reading macros from the the rcfile

[rmehtacs]

I am learning rpm/rpmbuild and I see strange behavior difference in RPM v4.4.2.3 and RPM v4.14.
I created an rpmrc file which has below content

macrofiles:/home/rmehta/rpmtest/rpmmacros

and rpmmacros has below contents

%_name Rakesh

When I execute rpmbuild --rcfile /home/rmehta/rpmtest/rpmrc --eval %_name it gives different output for both RPM versions For

RPM version 4.4.2.3 (SLES-15) it prints Rakesh
For RPM version 4.14.3 (SLES-11) it prints %_name

Also tried --eval '%{_name}' and it has same result.

My question is why this difference and why for RPM v4.14.3 its not reading the rcfile.

I tried same with RPM v4.11(openSUSE) and its behaviour is same as RPM v4.14.3.

[pmatilai]

Support for macrofiles: directive in rpmrc was dropped in rpm 4.6.0, 13 years ago. Rpm v4.4 is old and long obsolete, the only thing you'll learn from it is bad habits.

[rmehtacs]

@pmatilai Thanks for answer. Can you share any alternatives for this? What's the new way to define own macros and overriding existing ones. and Thanks again for your answer. This will give me a new direction for solution.

[rmehtacs]

The problem was solved by copying rpmmacros file in home directory as .rpmmacros.

Modified makefiles and add below command

cp -f <PATH_TO>/rpmmacros ~/.rpmmacros