Content-type: text/html Manpage of makepkg

makepkg

Section: (8)
Updated: March 3, 2003
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

makepkg - package build utility  

SYNOPSIS

makepkg  

DESCRIPTION

makepkg will build packages for you. All it needs is a build-capable linux platform, wget, and some build scripts. The advantage to a script-based build is that you only really do the work once. Once you have the build script for a package, you just need to run makepkg and it will do the rest: download source files, check dependencies, configure the buildtime settings, build the package, install the package into a temporary root, make customizations, generate meta-info, and package the whole thing up for pacman to use.

makeworld can be used to rebuild an entire package group, or the entire build tree.  

BUILD PROCESS (or How To Build Your Own Packages)

Start in an isolated directory (ie, it's not used for anything other than building this package). The build script should be called PKGBUILD and it should bear resemblance to the example below.

NOTE: If you have a local copy of the Arch Build System (ABS) tree on your computer, you can copy the PKGBUILD.proto file to your new package build directory and edit it from there. To acquire/sync the ABS tree, use the abs script included with pacman/makepkg.

 

PKGBUILD Example:

pkgname=modutils
pkgver=2.4.13
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Utilities for inserting and removing modules from the linux kernel"
backup=(etc/modules.conf)
depends=('glibc>=2.2.5' 'bash' 'zlib')
source=(ftp://ftp.server.com/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz modules.conf)

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  ./configure --prefix=/usr
  make || return 1
  make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
  # copy our custom modules.conf into the package root
  mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/etc
  cp ../modules.conf $startdir/pkg/etc
}

As you can see, the setup is fairly simple. The first three lines define the package name and version info. They also define the final package name which will be of the form $pkgname-$pkgver-$pkgrel.pkg.tar.gz. The fourth line provides a brief description of the package. These four lines should be present in every PKGBUILD script.

The line with backup= specifies files that should be treated specially when removing or upgrading packages. See HANDLING CONFIG FILES in the pacman manpage for more information on this.

The sixth line lists the dependencies for this package. In order to build/run the package, all dependencies must be satisifed first. makepkg will check this before attempting to build the package.

Once your PKGBUILD is created, you can run makepkg from the build directory. makepkg will then check dependencies and look for the source files required to build. If some are missing it will attempt to download them, provided there is a fully-qualified URL in the source array.

The sources are then extracted into a directory called ./src and the build function is called. This is where all package configuration, building, and installing should be done. Any customization will likely take place here.

After a package is built, the build function must install the package files into a special package root, which can be referenced by $startdir/pkg in the build function. The typical way to do this is one of the following:


make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install

or

make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install

Notice that the "/usr" portion should be present with "prefix", but not "DESTDIR".

Once the package is successfully installed into the package root, makepkg will remove some directories (as per Arch Linux package guidelines; if you use this elsewhere, feel free to change it) like /usr/doc and /usr/info. It will then strip debugging info from libraries and binaries and generate a meta-info file. Finally, it will compress everything into a .pkg.tar.gz file and leave it in the directory you ran makepkg from.

At this point you should have a package file in the current directory, named something like name-version-release.pkg.tar.gz. Done!

 

Install/Upgrade/Remove Scripting

Pacman has the ability to store and execute a package-specific script when it installs, removes, or upgrades a package. This allows a package to "configure itself" after installation and do the opposite right before it is removed.

The exact time the script is run varies with each operation:

post_install
script is run right after files are installed.

post_upgrade
script is run after all files have been upgraded.

pre_remove
script is run right before files are removed.

To use this feature, just create a file (eg, pkgname.install) and put it in the same directory as the PKGBUILD script. Then use the install directive:

install=pkgname.install

The install script does not need to be specified in the source array.

 

Install scripts must follow this format:

# arg 1:  the new package version
post_install() {
  #
  #  do post-install stuff here
  #
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
post_upgrade() {
  #
  #  do post-upgrade stuff here
  #
  /bin/true
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
pre_remove() {
  #
  #  do pre-remove stuff here
  #
  /bin/true
}

op=$1
shift

$op $*

This template is also available in your ABS tree (/usr/abs/install.proto).

 

PKGBUILD Directives

pkgname
The name of the package. This has be a unix-friendly name as it will be used in the package filename.

pkgver
This is the version of the software as released from the author (eg, 2.7.1).

pkgrel
This is the release number specific to Arch Linux packages.

pkgdesc
This should be a brief description of the package and its functionality.

backup
A space-delimited array of filenames (without a preceding slash). The backup line will be propagated to the package meta-info file for pacman. This will designate all files listed there to be backed up if this package is ever removed from a system. See HANDLING CONFIG FILES in the pacman manpage for more information.

install
Specified a special install script that is to be included in the package. This file should reside in the same directory as the PKGBUILD, and will be copied into the package by makepkg. It does not need to be included in the source array. (eg, install=modutils.install)

depends
An array of packages that this package depends on to build and run. Packages in this list should be surrounded with single quotes and contain at least the package name. They can also include a version requirement of the form name<>version, where <> is one of these three comparisons: >= (greater than equal to), <= (less than or equal to), or = (equal to). See the PKGBUILD example above for an example of the depends directive.

conflicts
An array of packages that will conflict with this package (ie, they cannot both be installed at the same time). This directive follows the same format as depends except you cannot specify versions here, only package names.

source
The source line is an array of source files required to build the package. Source files must reside in the same directory as the PKGBUILD file, unless they have a fully-qualified URL. Then if the source file does not already exist in /var/cache/pacman/src, the file is downloaded by wget.

 

MAKEPKG OPTIONS

-c, --clean
Clean up leftover work files/directories after a successful build.
-i, --install
Install/Upgrade the package after a successful build.
-s, --syncdeps
Install missing dependencies using pacman. When makepkg finds missing dependencies, it will run pacman to try and resolve them. If successful, pacman will download the missing packages from a package repository and install them for you.
-b, --builddeps
Build missing dependencies from source. When makepkg finds missing dependencies, it will look for the dependencies' PKGBUILD files under $ABSROOT (set in your /etc/makepkg.conf). If it finds them it will run another copy of makepkg to build and install the missing dependencies. The child makepkg calls will be made with the -b and -i options.
-d, --nodeps
Do not perform any dependency checks. This will let you override/ignore any dependencies required. There's a good chance this option will break the build process if all of the dependencies aren't installed.
-f, --force
makepkg will not build a package if a pkgname-pkgver-pkgrel.pkg.tar.gz file already exists in the build directory. You can override this behaviour with the --force switch.

 

CONFIGURATION

Configuration options are stored in /etc/makepkg.conf. This file is parsed as a bash script, so you can export any special compiler flags you wish to use. This is helpful for building for different architectures, or with different optimizations.

NOTE: This does not guarantee that all package Makefiles will use your exported variables. Some of them are flaky...  

SEE ALSO

pacman is the package manager that uses packages built by makepkg.

See the Arch Linux Documentation for package-building guidelines if you wish to contribute packages to the Arch Linux project.  

AUTHOR

Judd Vinet <jvinet@zeroflux.org>


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
BUILD PROCESS (or How To Build Your Own Packages)
PKGBUILD Example:
Install/Upgrade/Remove Scripting
Install scripts must follow this format:
PKGBUILD Directives
MAKEPKG OPTIONS
CONFIGURATION
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 17:22:11 GMT, March 04, 2003