WHAT IS IT

Buildpkg is a package build system. It gives you the opportunity to create package system (like rpm, dpkg, etc.) independent descriptions (.def) which can be used to create binary packages on every system.

It has currently support for the following systems and package types:

binary only (.tar.gz) + linux
- slackware (.tgz)
- rpm (redhat/suse/mandrake/...)
- deb (debian/...)
solaris/sunos (.pkg)
freebsd (.tgz)

HOW CAN I USE IT

Say, you have a file called 'program-0.2.1.tar.gz'. You want to compile and install it on your computer.

(1): execute 'mkskel program-0.2.1.tar.gz'

This step will parse the source file and use the found directory name as the source for the VERSION string. This can be right or cannot, depending on what kind of directory name it found. If it found eg. './program' then it cannot detect the VERSION and will display a warning message. In this case you have the oportunity to force buildpkg to parse the VERSION string directly from the file name. To do so, simply call buildpkg with the '--raw' option. But maybe the directory name is './dummy2-0.0.1' and you want to use '2-0.0.1' as the VERSION number. In this case you can overwrite the VERSION string using the '--version' option.

The result of this step is a definition file. Now you may want to have a look at the contents of this file and customize if you want.

NOTE: you can always overwrite any default value in this file.

(2): execute 'buildpkg program-0.2.1-1.def'

Now buildpkg will procceed each step (from executing until packaging) as described in buildpkg.1 man page.

The result of these steps is/are the [bin,dev,doc]package(s).

(3): Now you can install the [bin,dev,doc]package(s). Depending on which

distro you use, this may be done via :

       slackware: installpkg program-0.2.1-1.tgz
       redhat:    rpm -i program-0.2.1-1.rpm
       debian:    dpkg -i program-0.2.1-1.deb
       solaris:   pkgadd -d ./program-0.0.2-1.pkg
       freebsd:   pkg_add program-0.0.2_1.tgz

Since 0.0.2r28-pre3 buildpkg includes a more flexible system to build buildpkg.jail files. It comes with a simple (an extendable) list of files which should be included in the install-jail. The 'generate_jail.sh' util uses this list to create a system specific .jail file.