Hey Guys,

I am reading BuildPkg wiki page. I am planning to package (atleast start off from today ) for Zenwalk. I have found some packages Aka software which are not present in the Zen repos. I hope they will be useful for others.

Any ways, now my doubt is, I am planning to package Software X which has dependency Y which intern has another depenency X.

Now should i package X, Y, Z seperately or does buildpkg adds all these into one? How should i go?

If you suggest me to go for one, what to add here in this line:


Other way plz guide me. As i said, i am reading wiki page. But few things are confusing since this is my very much first time.

Also plz tell me, to build packages from buildpkg, should i keep all the src files in /usr/src dir? What if i dont want to?
Thanks.

I think it is better to keep separate sources built into separate packages.

And you don't have to build anything in /usr/src. That's just where the buildscripts have to be installed along with the package.

Thanks you. Ill start building. Althouh it seems greek and latin as of now. But i can catch it up.

I dont have any repo, so let see after building is done, i shall try to put in on some file sharing site.

Thanks

You can ask axxium for an ftp account.

Or put them on ZUR

Sure, first let me finish reading this packaging rules and wiki pages. After completing the first package, i shall let u guys know about things.

Second, in the buildpkg wiki, the author asks to first compile and install the package (software) then go for buildpkg thingy. Why is it so? Cant we do packaging with out installing the software which undergoes packaging?

How do you know that everything will go as planned? You have to make a test run in any case.

Ya for that, i wud first build it (package it) then test it on my machine, then only ill submit to the official repos for testing. Can this be done right?

The thing is, why 2 times testing?

This is what works for me:

First I download the source, and un-tar into its own directory. I organise the packages as best I can, all the packages go into their own directory like so --
/home/max/compiles/pkgname/pkgver/pkgsrc
Then I'll look at the source, and check out the README and/or INSTALL files for any compilation directions.
Then I'll run (if the source includes a configure script) to see if there are any directions not included in the README or INSTALL files.
Using the information I get from these steps, I set up the ZENBUILD accordingly.
Then I run
This leaves both the pkg and src directories in your build directory after the packages has been built, so I can easily check the structure of the package to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be (icons, binaries, docs in the right place etc etc).
If everything's good, I'll check the .log for any errors, and the .dep and .src files to see that they're built correctly.
Then I'll install the package on my system and test it out. If everything's good I upload to ZUR and post to the package tests forum.

Hope this helps, good luck

Wow pretty clear. This kind with example explaination would be good in the wiki i guess. It did add an extra enthu in me now

I use a quite similiar procedure, but the first time or especially with more difficult packages it can be useful if you try the commands (and what they indeed do) in advance for more complicated software.

If I run in make problems I usually analyse why they occurred try to fix them and after that try it again manually and when it works I'll package it. Also I advise you to run requiredbuilder only once and add the found depencendies to extradepends, especially for long requiredbuilder runs. If you assume changed dependencies you should of course reactivate it or run it manually.

You really don't know even if anything will get in the package the first time. And it's easier to trace your steps if you do them one by one.

Here's what I do for a new package as a non-privileged user before building: I untar the source, look in README and INSTALL files and look if there is a configure script (it's not always the case). If there is I do

to find which options there are and which ones I need. After I decide I use them:

followed by

and

still as a non previleged user. DESTDIR doesn't work some times and this way you will definitely get errors if something is going to be installed in your / dir instead. If everything is OK though, I look in the test-install dir to see if there's anything additional needed, like a .desktop file, icons, misplaced docs etc. After I'm sure about those, I put everything in the ZENBUILD and then login as root to create a first package, try it out and see if anything is missing again (could be some settings file needs to be created or tweaked for zenwalk). I think you get the point.

Mind let me know how to create ZenBuild file? Should i write a new one or take the example build file given by Prafesse in the wiki?

Kool u r point did made sense to me and a good way to go. But as i said in my previous 2 or 3 posts, that the package for which i am building has X package as dependencies. Then this X has one more Y. Its all just library packages. SO i have planned to package all these seperately.

So if i isntall them, how do i know if icons or shortcuts are missing, coz for libraries i cant know whats wrong right?

And thanks gapan.