The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc)

Alistair Crooks

Hubert Feyrer

$NetBSD: pkgsrc.html,v 1.3 2003/06/23 13:27:57 grant Exp $

Abstract

Information about using the NetBSD package system and building packages.


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Overview
1.3. Terminology
1.4. Typography
I. pkgsrc user's guide
2. Using pkgsrc on systems other than NetBSD
2.1. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
2.2. Platform specific notes
3. Using The NetBSD package system
3.1. Working with binary packages
3.2. Building packages from source
4. Creating binary packages
4.1. Building a single binary package
4.2. Settings for creation of binary packages
4.3. Doing a bulk build of all packages
4.4. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection
II. pkgsrc developer's guide
5. Package components - files, directories and contents
5.1. Makefile
5.2. distinfo
5.3. patches/*
5.4. Other mandatory files
5.5. Optional files
5.6. work*
5.7. files/*
5.8. Portability of packages
6. PLIST issues
6.1. Miscellaneous
6.2. PLIST_SRC
6.3. PLIST_SUBST
6.4. Perl5 modules
6.5. User Interaction
7. Notes on fixes for packages
7.1. CPP defines
7.2. Shared libraries - libtool
7.3. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
7.4. GNU Autoconf/Automake
7.5. Package configuration files
7.6. Feedback to the author
8. The build process
8.1. Program location
8.2. Main targets
8.3. Other helpful targets
9. buildlink2 methodology
9.1. Converting packages to use buildlink2
9.2. Writing buildlink2.mk files
10. Debugging
11. FAQs & features of the package system
11.1. Packages using GNU autoconf
11.2. Other distrib methods than .tar.gz
11.3. Packages not creating their own subdirectory
11.4. Custom configuration process
11.5. Packages not building in their DISTNAME directory
11.6. How to fetch all distfiles at once
11.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
11.8. If your patch contains an RCS ID
11.9. How to pull in variables from /etc/mk.conf
11.10. Is there a mailing list for pkg-related discussion?
11.11. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
11.12. Dependencies on other packages
11.13. Conflicts with other packages
11.14. Software which has a WWW Home Page
11.15. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
11.16. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?
11.17. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing package
11.18. Could not find bsd.own.mk - what's wrong?
11.19. Restricted packages
11.20. Packages using (n)curses
11.21. Automated security check
11.22. What's the proper way to create an account from a package?
11.23. How to handle compiler bugs
11.24. Packages providing info files
11.25. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading
11.26. Configuration files handling and placement
11.27. Packages providing login shells
11.28. Packages providing locale catalogues
11.29. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
11.30. Packages containing perl scripts
11.31. Packages that cannot or should not be built
12. Submitting and Committing
12.1. Submitting your packages
12.2. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
12.3. Updating a Package to a Newer Version
12.4. Moving a Package in pkgsrc
A. A simple example of a package: bison
A.1. files
A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging
B. Build logs
B.1. Building top
B.2. Packaging top
C. Layout of the FTP server's package archive

Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents

1.1. Introduction
1.2. Overview
1.3. Terminology
1.4. Typography

1.1. Introduction

The NetBSD package system, pkgsrc, is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems. It is used to enable such freely available software to be configured and built easily on supported platforms.

Once the software has been built, it is manipulated with the pkg_* tools so that installation and de-installation, printing of an inventory of all installed packages and retrieval of one-line comments or more verbose descriptions are all simple.

pkgsrc currently contains over 3500 packages, including:

...just to name a few.

pkgsrc has built-in support for handling varying dependencies, such as pthreads and X11, and extended features such as IPv6 support on a range of platforms.

pkgsrc was originally developed on NetBSD, and now supports the following platforms:

1.2. Overview

This document is divided into two parts. The first, pkgsrc user's guide, describes how one can use one of the packages in the Package Collection, either by installing a precompiled binary package, or by building one's own copy using the NetBSD package system. The second part, pkgsrc developer's guide, explains how to prepare a package so it can be easily built by other NetBSD users without knowing about the package's building details.

1.3. Terminology

There has been a lot of talk about “ports”, “packages”, etc. so far. Here is a description of all the terminology used within this document.

  • Package

    A set of files and building instructions that describe what's necessary to build a certain piece of software using the NetBSD package system. Packages are traditionally stored under /usr/pkgsrc.

  • The NetBSD package system

    This is the part of the NetBSD operating system handling building (compiling), installing, and removing of packages.

  • Distfile

    This term describes the file or files that are provided by the author of the piece of freely available software to distribute his work. All the changes necessary to build on NetBSD are reflected in the corresponding package. Usually the distfile is in the form of a compressed tar-archive, but other types are possible, too. Distfiles are stored below /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles.

  • Port

    This is the term used by FreeBSD people for what we call a package. In NetBSD terminology, “port” refers to a different architecture.

  • Precompiled (binary) package

    A set of binaries built by the NetBSD package system from a distfile using the NetBSD package system and stuffed together in a single .tgz file so it can be installed on machines of the same machine architecture without the need to recompile. Packages are generated in /usr/pkgsrc/packages by the NetBSD package system; there is also an archive on ftp.NetBSD.org.

    Sometimes, this is referred to by the term “package” too, especially in the context of precompiled packages.

  • Program

    The piece of software to be installed which will be constructed from all the files in the Distfile by the actions defined in the corresponding package.

1.4. Typography

When giving examples for commands, shell prompts are used to show if the command should/can be issued as root, or if “normal” user privileges are sufficient. We use a “#” for root's shell prompt, and a “%” for users' shell prompt, assuming they use the C-shell or tcsh.

pkgsrc user's guide

Chapter 2. Using pkgsrc on systems other than NetBSD

Table of Contents

2.1. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
2.2. Platform specific notes

2.1. Bootstrapping pkgsrc

For Operating Systems other than NetBSD, we provide a bootstrap kit to build the required tools to use pkgsrc on your platform. As well as native NetBSD support, pkgsrc and the bootstrap kit have support for the following operating systems:

  • Darwin (Mac OS X)
  • FreeBSD
  • IRIX
  • Linux
  • OpenBSD
  • Solaris

Support for other platforms is under development.

Installing the bootstrap kit should be as simple as:

# cvs checkout othersrc/bootstrap-pkgsrc
# cd othersrc/bootstrap-pkgsrc
# ./bootstrap

This will use the defaults of /usr/pkg for the prefix and /var/db/pkg for the package database directory. However, these can also be set using command-line parameters.

Binary packages for the pkgsrc tools and an initial set of packages is available for supported platforms. An up-to-date list of these can be found on www.pkgsrc.org.

2.2. Platform specific notes

Here are some platform-specific notes you should be aware of.

2.2.1. Darwin (Mac OS X)

Darwin 5.x and 6.x are supported. There are two methods of using pkgsrc on Mac OS X, by using a disk image, or a UFS partition.

If you already have a UFS partition, or have a spare partition that you can format as UFS, it is recommended to use that instead of the disk image. It'll be somewhat faster and will mount automatically at boot time, where you must manually mount a disk image.

Note

You cannot use a HFS+ file system for pkgsrc, because pkgsrc currently requires the filesystem to be case-sensitive, and HFS+ is not.

2.2.1.1. Using a disk image

Create the disk image:

# cd bootstrap-pkgsrc
# ./ufsdiskimage create ~/Documents/NetBSD 512 # megabytes - season to taste
# ./ufsdiskimage mount ~/Documents/NetBSD
# sudo chown `id -u`:`id -g` /Volumes/NetBSD

That's it!

2.2.1.2. Using a UFS partition

By default, /usr will be on your root file system, normally HFS+. It is possible to use the default prefix of /usr/pkg by symlinking /usr/pkg to a directory on a UFS file system. Obviously, another symlink is required if you want to place the package database directory outside the prefix. e.g.

# ./bootstrap --pkgdbdir=/usr/pkg/pkgdb --pkgsrc=/Volumes/ufs/pkgsrc

If you created your partitions at the time of installing Mac OS X and formatted the target partition as UFS, it should automatically mount on /Volumes/<volume name> when the machine boots. If you are (re)formatting a partition as UFS, you need to ensure that the partition map correctly reflects “Apple_UFS” and not “Apple_HFS”.

The problem is that none of the disk tools will let you touch a disk that is booted from. You can unmount the partition, but even if you newfs it, the partition type will be incorrect and the automounter won't mount it. It can be mounted manually, but it won't appear in Finder.

You'll need to boot off of the OS X Installation (User) CD. When the Installation program starts, go up to the menu and select Disk Utility. Now, you will be able to select the partition you want to be UFS, and Format it Apple UFS. Quit the Disk Utility, quit the installer which will reboot your machine. The new UFS file system will appear in Finder.

Be aware that the permissions on the new file system will be writable by root only.

This note is as of 10.2 (Jaguar) and applies to earlier versions. Hopefully Apple will fix Disk Utility in 10.3 (Panther).

2.2.2. FreeBSD

FreeBSD 4.7 and 5.0 have been tested and are supported, other versions may work.

Care should be taken so that the tools that this kit installs do not conflict with the FreeBSD userland tools. There are several steps:

  1. FreeBSD stores its ports pkg database in /var/db/pkg. It is therefore recommended that you choose a different location (e.g. /usr/pkgdb) by using the --pkgdbdir option to the bootstrap script.

  2. If you do not intend to use the FreeBSD ports tools, it's probably a good idea to move them out of the way to avoid confusion, e.g.

    # cd /usr/sbin
    # mv pkg_add pkg_add.orig
    # mv pkg_create pkg_create.orig
    # mv pkg_delete pkg_delete.orig
    # mv pkg_info pkg_info.orig
  3. An example /etc/mk.conf file will be placed in /etc/mk.conf.example file when you use the bootstrap script.

2.2.3. IRIX

IRIX 6.5 is tested and supported, other versions may work.

You will need a working C compiler, either gcc or SGI's MIPS and MIPSpro compiler (cc/c89). Please set the CC environment variable according to your preference.

Please make sure that you have no conflicting CFLAGS in your environment or the /etc/mk.conf. Particularly, make sure that you do not try to link n32 object files with lib64 or vice versa. Check your /etc/compiler.defaults!

2.2.4. OpenBSD

OpenBSD 3.0 and 3.2 are tested and supported.

Care should be taken so that the tools that this kit installs do not conflict with the OpenBSD userland tools. There are several steps:

  1. OpenBSD stores its ports pkg database in /var/db/pkg. It is therefore recommended that you choose a different location (e.g. /usr/pkgdb) by using the --pkgdbdir option to the bootstrap script.

  2. If you do not intend to use the OpenBSD ports tools, it's probably a good idea to move them out of the way to avoid confusion, e.g.

    # cd /usr/sbin
    # mv pkg_add pkg_add.orig
    # mv pkg_create pkg_create.orig
    # mv pkg_delete pkg_delete.orig
    # mv pkg_info pkg_info.orig
  3. An example /etc/mk.conf file will be placed in /etc/mk.conf.example file when you use the bootstrap script. OpenBSD's make program uses /etc/mk.conf as well. You can work around this by enclosing all the pkgsrc specific parts of the file with:

    .ifdef BSD_PKG_MK
    # pkgsrc stuff, e.g. insert bsd.pkg.defaults.mk or similar here
    .else
    # OpenBSD stuff
    .endif

2.2.5. Solaris

Solaris 2.6 through 9 are supported. You will need a working C compiler. Both gcc 2.95.3 and Sun WorkShop 5 have been tested.

The following packages are required on Solaris 8 for the bootstrap process and to build packages.

  • SUNWsprot
  • SUNWarc
  • SUNWbtool
  • SUNWtoo
  • SUNWlibm

Please note the use of GNU binutils on Solaris is not supported.

2.2.5.1. If you are using gcc

It makes life much simpler if you only use the same gcc consistently for building all packages.

It is recommended that an external gcc be used only for bootstrapping, then either build gcc from lang/gcc or install a binary gcc package, then remove gcc used during bootstrapping.

2.2.5.2. If you are using Sun WorkShop

You will need at least the following packages installed (from WorkShop 5.0)

  • SPROcc - Sun WorkShop Compiler C 5.0
  • SPROcpl - Sun WorkShop Compiler C++ 5.0
  • SPROild - Sun WorkShop Incremental Linker
  • SPROlang - Sun WorkShop Compilers common components

You should set CC, CXX and optionally, CPP in /etc/mk.conf, eg.

CC=	cc
CXX=	CC
CPP=	/usr/ccs/lib/cpp

You may also want to build 64-bit binaries, eg.

CFLAGS=	-xtarget=ultra -xarch=v9

Whichever compiler you use, please ensure the compiler tools and your $prefix are in your PATH. This includes /usr/ccs/{bin,lib} and eg. /usr/pkg/{bin,sbin}.

Chapter 3. Using The NetBSD package system

3.1. Working with binary packages

This section describes how to find, retrieve and install a precompiled binary package that someone else already prepared for your type of machine.

3.1.1. How to get binary packages

Precompiled packages are stored on ftp.NetBSD.org and its mirrors in the directory /pub/NetBSD/packages for anonymous FTP access. Please pick the right subdirectory there as indicated by uname -p. In that directory, there is a subdirectory for each category plus a subdirectory All which includes the actual binaries in .tgz files. The category subdirectories use symbolic links to those files (this is the same directory layout as in /usr/pkgsrc/packages).

This same directory layout applies for CDROM distributions, only that the directory may be rooted somewhere else, probably somewhere below /cdrom. Please consult your CDROMs documentation for the exact location.

3.1.2. Installing binary packages

If you have the files on a CDROM or downloaded them to your hard disk, you can install them with the following command (be sure to su to root first):

# pkg_add /path/to/package.tgz

If you have FTP access and you don't want to download the packages via FTP prior to installation, you can do this automatically by giving pkg_add an FTP URL:

# pkg_add ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/<OS Ver>/<arch>/All/package.tgz

If there is any doubt, the uname utility can be used to determine the <OS Ver>, and <arch> by running uname -rp.

Also note that any prerequisite packages needed to run the package in question will be installed, too, assuming they are present where you install from.

After you've installed packages, be sure to have /usr/pkg/bin in your PATH so you can actually start the just installed program.

3.1.3. A word of warning

Please pay very careful attention to the warnings expressed in that manual page about the inherent dangers of installing binary packages which you did not create yourself, and the security holes that can be introduced onto your system by indiscriminate adding of such files.

3.2. Building packages from source

This assumes that the package is already part of the NetBSD package system. If it is not, see Part II.

3.2.1. Requirements

To build packages from source on a NetBSD system the “comp” and the “text” distribution sets must be installed. If you want to build X11 related packages the “xbase” and “xcomp” distribution sets are required, too.

3.2.1.1. Where to get pkgsrc

There are three ways to get pkgsrc. Either as a tar file, via SUP, or via CVS. All three ways are described here.

To get the package source going, you need to get the pkgsrc.tar.gz file from ftp.NetBSD.org and unpack it into /usr/pkgsrc.

As an alternative, you can get pkgsrc via the Software Update Protocol, SUP. To do so, make sure your supfile has a line

release=pkgsrc

in it, see the examples in /usr/share/examples/supfiles, and that the /usr/pkgsrc directory exists. Then, simply run sup -v /path/to/your/supfile.

To get pkgsrc via CVS, make sure you have cvs installed. If not present on your system, it can be found as precompiled binary on ftp.NetBSD.org. To do an initial (full) checkout of pkgsrc, do the following steps:

% setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot
% setenv CVS_RSH ssh
% cd /usr
% cvs checkout -P pkgsrc

This will create the pkgsrc directory in your /usr, and all the package source will be stored under /usr/pkgsrc. To update pkgsrc after the initial checkout, make sure you have CVS_RSH set as above, then do:

% cd /usr/pkgsrc
% cvs -q update -dP

Please also note that it is possible to have multiple copies of the pkgsrc hierarchy in use at any one time - all work is done relatively within the pkgsrc tree.

3.2.1.2. Fetching distfiles

There is one gotcha: The distribution file (i.e. the unmodified source) must exist on your system for the packages system to be able to build it. If it does not, then ftp is used to fetch the distribution files automatically.

You can overwrite some of the major distribution sites to fit to sites that are close to your own. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk to find some examples - in particular, look for the MASTER_SORT, MASTER_SORT_REGEX and INET_COUNTRY definitions. This may save some of your bandwidth and time.

You can change these settings either in your shell's environment, or, if you want to keep the settings, by editing the /etc/mk.conf file, and adding the definitions there.

If you don't have a permanent Internet connection and you want to know which files to download, make fetch-list will tell you what you'll need. Put these distfiles into /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles.

3.2.1.3. How to build and install

Once the distfile(s) have been fetched, building a package is as simple as changing into the package directory and running make:

% cd editors/vim
% make

Installing the package on your system requires you to be root. However, pkgsrc has a just-in-time su feature, which allows you to only become root for the actual installation step. e.g.

% make install
===> Installing for top-3.5beta5
===> Becoming root@mofo to install top-3.5beta5.
/usr/bin/su Password: <password>
[...installation continues...]

Taking the top system utility as an example, we can install it on our system by building as shown in Appendix B, Build logs.

The program is installed under the default root of the packages tree - /usr/pkg. Should this not conform to your tastes, simply set the LOCALBASE variable in your environment, and it will use that value as the root of your packages tree. So, to use /usr/local, set LOCALBASE=/usr/local in your environment. Please note that you should use a root which is dedicated to packages and not shared with other programs (ie, do not try and use LOCALBASE=/usr). Also, you should not try to add any of your own files or directories (such as src/, obj/, or pkgsrc/) below the LOCALBASE tree. This is to prevent possible conflicts between programs and other files installed by the package system and whatever else may have been installed there.

There is, of course, one exception to this - X11 packages are traditionally installed in the X11 tree. The definition used to identify the root of the X11 tree is the X11BASE definition.

It is possible to install X11 packages in the LOCALBASE tree, for which you must install the pkgtools/xpkgwedge package - see Section 8.1, “Program location” for further details.

Some packages look in /etc/mk.conf to alter some configuration options at build time. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk to get an overview of what will be set there by default. Environment variables such as LOCALBASE, and X11BASE can be set in /etc/mk.conf to save having to remember to set them each time you want to use pkgsrc.

Occasionally, people want to “look under the covers” to see what is going on when a package is building or being installed. This may be for debugging purposes, or out of simple curiosity. A number of utility values have been added to help with this.

  1. If you invoke the make(1) command with PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2, then a huge amount of information will be displayed. For example,

    % make patch PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2

    will show all the commands that are invoked, up to and including the “patch” stage.

  2. If you want to know the value of a certain make(1) definition, then the VARNAME definition should be used, in conjunction with the show-var target. e.g.

    % make show-var VARNAME=DISTFILES

    will show the expansion of the make(1) variable DISTFILES.

If you want to de-install and re-install a binary package that you've created (see next section), that you put into pkgsrc/packages manually or that's located on a remote FTP server, you can use the the "bin-install" target. This target will install a binary package - if available - via pkg_add, else do a make package. The list of remote FTP sites searched is kept in the variable BINPKG_SITE, which defaults to ftp.NetBSD.org. Any flags that should be added to pkg_add(8) can be put into BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS. See pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk for more details.

A final word of warning: If you setup a system that has a non-standard setting for LOCALBASE (or X11BASE, for that matter), be sure to set that before any packages are installed, as you can not use several directories for the same purpose. Doing so will result in pkgsrc not being able to properly detect your installed packages, and fail miserably. Note also that precompiled binary packages are usually built with the default LOCALBASE of /usr/pkg, and that you should not install any if you use a non-standard LOCALBASE.

Chapter 4. Creating binary packages

4.1. Building a single binary package

Once you have built and installed a package, you can create a binary package which can be installed on another system with pkg_add(1). This saves having to build the same package on a group of hosts and wasting CPU time. It also provides a simple means for others to install your package, should you distribute it.

Create a binary package:

# cd sysutils/top
# make package

This will build and install your package (if not already done), and then build a binary package from what was installed. You can then use the pkg_* tools to manipulate it. Binary packages are created by default in /usr/pkgsrc/packages, in the form of a gzip or bzip2 tar file. See Section B.2, “Packaging top” for a continuation of the above sysutils/top example.

See Chapter 12, Submitting and Committing for information on how to submit such a binary package.

4.2. Settings for creation of binary packages

See Section 8.3, “Other helpful targets”.

4.3. Doing a bulk build of all packages

If you want to get a full set of precompiled binary packages, this section describes how to get them. Beware that the bulk build will remove all currently installed packages from your your system! Having a FTP server configured either on the machine doing the bulk builds or on a nearby NFS server can help to make the packages available to everyone. See ftpd(8) for more information. If you use a remote NFS server's storage, be sure to not actually compile on NFS storage, as this slows things down a lot.

4.3.1. Configuration

4.3.1.1. /etc/mk.conf

You may want to set things in /etc/mk.conf. Look at pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk for details of the default settings. You will want to ensure that ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES meet your local policy. As used in this example, _ACCEPTABLE=yes accepts all licenses.

PACKAGES?=      ${_PKGSRCDIR}/packages/${MACHINE_ARCH}
WRKOBJDIR?=     /usr/tmp/pkgsrc   # build here instead of in pkgsrc
BSDSRCDIR=      /usr/src
BSDXSRCDIR=     /usr/xsrc         # for x11/xservers
OBJHOSTNAME?=   yes               # use work.`hostname`
FAILOVER_FETCH= yes               # insist on the correct checksum
PKG_DEVELOPER?= yes
_ACCEPTABLE=    yes

If you wish to use xpkgwedge for the entire build, then add:

BULK_PREREQ+= pkgtools/xpkgwedge

Other packages which must be installed during the bulk build to modify the build behaviour may be added to the BULK_PREREQ variable. Note that currently the only package for which BULK_PREREQ makes sense is xpkgwedge.

4.3.1.2. build.conf

In pkgsrc/mk/bulk, copy “build.conf-example” to “build.conf” and edit it, following the comments in that file. This is the config file that determines where log files are generated after the build, where to mail the build report, where your pkgsrc is located and which user to su(8) to do a cvs update.

4.3.1.3. pre-build.local

It is possible to configure the bulk build to perform certain site specific tasks at the end of the pre-build stage. If the file pre-build.local exists in /usr/pkgsrc/mk/bulk it will be executed (as a sh(1) script) at the end of the usual pre-build stage. An example use of pre-build.local is to have the line:

# echo "I do not have enough disk space to build this pig." \
    > pkgsrc/games/crafty-book-enormous/$BROKENF

to prevent the system from trying to build a particular package which requires nearly 3 Gb of disk space.

4.3.2. Other environmental considerations

As /usr/pkg will be completely deleted at the start of bulk builds, make sure your login shell is placed somewhere else. Either drop it into /usr/local/bin (and adjust your login shell in the password file), or (re-)install it via pkg_add from /etc/rc.local, so you can login after a reboot (remember that your current process won't die if the package is removed, you just can't start any new instances of the shell any more). Also, if you use NetBSD earlier than 1.5, or you still want to use the pkgsrc version of ssh for some reason, be sure to install ssh before starting it from rc.local:

( cd /usr/pkgsrc/security/ssh ; make bulk-install )
if [ -f	/usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/sshd ]; then
    /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/sshd
fi

Not doing so will result in you being not able to log in via ssh after the bulk build is finished or if the machine gets rebooted or crashes. You have been warned! :)

4.3.3. Operation

Make sure you don't need any of the packages still installed.

Warning

During the bulk build, all packages will be removed!

Be sure to remove all other things that might interfere with builds, like some libs installed in /usr/local, etc. then become root and type:

# cd /usr/pkgsrc
# sh mk/bulk/build

If for some reason your last build didn't complete (power failure, system panic, ...), you can continue it by running:

# sh mk/bulk/build restart

At the end of the bulk run, you will get a summary via mail, and find build logs in the directory specified by FTP in the build.conf file.

4.3.4. What it does

The bulk builds consist of three steps:

  1. pre-build

    The script updates your pkgsrc via (anon)cvs, then cleans out any broken distfiles, and removes all packages installed.

  2. the bulk build

    This is basically “make bulk-package” with an optimised order in which packages will be built. Packages that don't require other packages will be built first, and packages with many depends will be built later.

  3. post-build

    Generates a report that's placed in the directory specified in the build.conf file named broken.html, a short version of that report will also be mailed to the build's admin.

During the build, a list of broken packages will be compiled in /usr/pkgsrc/.broken (or .../.broken.${MACHINE} if OBJMACHINE is set), individual build logs of broken builds can be found in the package's directory. These files are used by the bulk-targets to mark broken builds to not waste time trying to rebuild them, and they can be used to debug these broken package builds later.

4.3.5. Disk space requirements

Currently, roughly the following requirements are valid for 1.5/i386:

  • 1500MB - distfiles (NFS ok)
  • 1000MB - full set of all binaries (NFS ok)
  • 1500MB - temp space for compiling (local disk recommended)

For 1.5/alpha:

  • 1300MB - full set of all binaries (NFS ok)

Note that all pkgs will be de-installed as soon as they are turned into a binary package, and that work-sources are removed, so there is no huge demand to disk space. Afterwards, if the package is needed again, it will be installed via “pkg_add” instead of building again, so there are no cycles wasted by recompiling.

4.3.6. Setting up a sandbox for chroot'ed builds

If you don't want all the pkgs nuked from a machine (rendering it useless for anything but pkg compiling), there is the possibility of doing the pkg bulk build inside a chroot environment.

The first step to do so is setting up a chroot sandbox, e.g. /usr/sandbox. After extracting all the sets from a NetBSD installation or doing a make distribution DESTDIR=/usr/sandbox in /usr/src/etc, be sure the following items are present and properly configured:

  • kernel

    # cp /netbsd /usr/sandbox

  • /dev/*

    # cd /usr/sandbox/dev ; sh MAKEDEV all

  • /etc/resolv.conf (for security/smtpd and mail):

    # cp /etc/resolv.conf /usr/sandbox/etc

  • working(!) mail config (hostname, sendmail.cf):

    # cp /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /usr/sandbox/etc/mail

  • /etc/localtime (for security/smtpd):

    # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /usr/sandbox/etc/localtime

  • /usr/src (system sources, for sysutils/aperture, net/ppp-mppe):

    # ln -s ../disk1/cvs .
    # ln -s cvs/src-1.6 src
    # ln -s cvs/pkgsrc .

  • create /var/db/pkg (not part of default install):

    # mkdir /usr/sandbox/var/db/pkg

  • create /usr/pkg (not part of default install):

    # mkdir /usr/sandbox/usr/pkg

  • checkout pkgsrc into /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc:

    # cd /usr/sandbox/usr
    # cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -d -P pkgsrc

  • edit /etc/mk.conf, see Section 4.3.1.1, “/etc/mk.conf”.
  • adjust mk/bulk/build.conf to suit your needs.

Note

Don't forget to install X.

If you are a developer and want to upload the resulting binary packages to ftp.NetBSD.org, be sure you are using the default X version for your architecture and release (that is XFree86 3.3.6 for 1.5.x, and XFree86 4.2.1 for NetBSD 1.6.1 on cats, i386 and macppc ports, 3.3.6 on all other ports).

The next thing you need is a fresh checkout of pkgsrc (e.g. from anoncvs). Do not mount/link this to the copy of your pkgsrc tree you do development in, as this will likely cause problems! Adjust .../pkgsrc/packages and .../pkgsrc/distfiles to point to some places outside the sandbox if you want to make the files public.

When the chroot sandbox is setup, you can start the build with the following steps:

# cd /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc
# sh mk/bulk/do-sandbox-build

This will just jump inside the sandbox and start building. At the end of the build, mail will be sent with the results of the build. Created binary pkgs will be in /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc/packages (wherever that points/mounts to/from).

4.4. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection

After your bulk pkgsrc build has completed, you may wish to create a CD-ROM set of the resulting binary packages to assist in installing packages on other machines. The pkgtools/cdpack package provides a simple tool for creating the ISO 9660 images. cdpack arranges the packages on the CD-ROMs in a way that keeps all the dependencies for given package on the same CD as that package.

4.4.1. Example of cdpack

Complete documentation for cdpack is found in cdpack(1). The following short example assumes that the binary packages are left in /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All and that sufficient disk space exists in /u2 to hold the ISO 9660 images.

# mkdir /u2/images
# pkg_add /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All/cdpack
# cdpack /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All /u2/images

If you wish to include a common set of files (COPYRIGHT, README, etc.) on each CD in the collection, then you need to create a directory which contains these files. e.g.

# mkdir /tmp/common
# echo "This is a README" > /tmp/common/README
# echo "Another file" > /tmp/common/COPYING
# mkdir /tmp/common/bin
# echo "#!/bin/sh" > /tmp/common/bin/myscript
# echo "echo Hello world" >> /tmp/common/bin/myscript
# chmod 755 /tmp/common/bin/myscript

Now create the images:

# cdpack -x /tmp/common /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All /u2/images

Each image will contain README, COPYING, and bin/myscript in their root directories.

pkgsrc developer's guide

Table of Contents

5. Package components - files, directories and contents
5.1. Makefile
5.2. distinfo
5.3. patches/*
5.4. Other mandatory files
5.5. Optional files
5.6. work*
5.7. files/*
5.8. Portability of packages
6. PLIST issues
6.1. Miscellaneous
6.2. PLIST_SRC
6.3. PLIST_SUBST
6.4. Perl5 modules
6.5. User Interaction
7. Notes on fixes for packages
7.1. CPP defines
7.2. Shared libraries - libtool
7.3. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
7.4. GNU Autoconf/Automake
7.5. Package configuration files
7.6. Feedback to the author
8. The build process
8.1. Program location
8.2. Main targets
8.3. Other helpful targets
9. buildlink2 methodology
9.1. Converting packages to use buildlink2
9.2. Writing buildlink2.mk files
10. Debugging
11. FAQs & features of the package system
11.1. Packages using GNU autoconf
11.2. Other distrib methods than .tar.gz
11.3. Packages not creating their own subdirectory
11.4. Custom configuration process
11.5. Packages not building in their DISTNAME directory
11.6. How to fetch all distfiles at once
11.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
11.8. If your patch contains an RCS ID
11.9. How to pull in variables from /etc/mk.conf
11.10. Is there a mailing list for pkg-related discussion?
11.11. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
11.12. Dependencies on other packages
11.13. Conflicts with other packages
11.14. Software which has a WWW Home Page
11.15. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
11.16. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?
11.17. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing package
11.18. Could not find bsd.own.mk - what's wrong?
11.19. Restricted packages
11.20. Packages using (n)curses
11.21. Automated security check
11.22. What's the proper way to create an account from a package?
11.23. How to handle compiler bugs
11.24. Packages providing info files
11.25. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading
11.26. Configuration files handling and placement
11.27. Packages providing login shells
11.28. Packages providing locale catalogues
11.29. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
11.30. Packages containing perl scripts
11.31. Packages that cannot or should not be built
12. Submitting and Committing
12.1. Submitting your packages
12.2. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
12.3. Updating a Package to a Newer Version
12.4. Moving a Package in pkgsrc

Chapter 5. Package components - files, directories and contents

Table of Contents

5.1. Makefile
5.2. distinfo
5.3. patches/*
5.4. Other mandatory files
5.5. Optional files
5.6. work*
5.7. files/*
5.8. Portability of packages

Whenever you're preparing a package, there are a number of files involved which are described in the following sections.

5.1. Makefile

Building, installation and creation of a binary package are all controlled by the package's Makefile.

There is a Makefile for each package. This file includes the standard bsd.pkg.mk file (referenced as ../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk), which sets all the definitions and actions necessary for the package to compile and install itself. The mandatory variables are the DISTNAME which specifies the base name of the distribution file to be downloaded from the site on the Internet, MASTER_SITES which specifies that site, CATEGORIES which denotes the categories into which the package falls, PKGNAME which is the name of the package, the MAINTAINER name, and the COMMENT variable, which should contain a one-line description of the package (the package name should not appear, it will be added automatically). The maintainer variable is there so that anyone who quibbles with the (always completely correct) decisions taken by the guy who maintains the port can complain vigorously.

The MASTER_SITES may be set to one of the predefined sites:

${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB}
${MASTER_SITE_GNU}
${MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN}
${MASTER_SITE_TEX_CTAN}
${MASTER_SITE_SUNSITE}
${MASTER_SITE_GNOME}
${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE}

If one of these predefined sites is chosen, you may require the ability to specify a subdirectory of that site. Since these macros may expand to more than one actual site, you must use the following construct to specify a subdirectory:

${MASTER_SITE_GNU:=subdirectory/name/}

Note the trailing slash after the subdirectory name.

Note

MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR has been deprecated and should no longer be used.

If the package has multiple DISTFILES or multiple PATCHFILES from different sites, set SITES_foo to a list of URI's where file “foo” may be found. “foo” includes the suffix, e.g.

DISTFILES=	${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}
DISTFILES+=	foo-file.tar.gz
SITES_foo-file.tar.gz=http://www.somewhere.com/somehow/ \
	http://www.somewhereelse.com/mirror/somehow/

Note that the normal default setting of DISTFILES must be made explicit if you want to add to it (rather than replace it), as you usually would.

Currently the following values are available for CATEGORIES. If more than one is used, they need to be separated by spaces:

archivers  audio      benchmarks   biology       cad     
chat       comms      converters   cross         databases
devel      editors    emulators    finance       fonts
games      graphics   ham          japanese      lang
mail       math       mbone        misc          net
news       parallel   print        security      shells
sysutils   textproc   time         wm            www
x11

Please pay attention to the following gotchas:

  • Add MANCOMPRESSED if manpages are installed in compressed form by the package; see comment in bsd.pkg.mk.

  • Replace /usr/local with “${PREFIX}” in all files (see patches, below).

  • If the package installs any info files, see Section 11.24, “Packages providing info files”.

  • Adjust MAINTAINER to be either yourself, if you plan to maintain the package for future updates, or set it to the default maintainer .

  • If there exists a home page for the software in question, please add the variable HOMEPAGE right after MAINTAINER. The value of this variable should be the URL for the home page.

  • Be sure to set the COMMENT variable to a short description of the package.

5.2. distinfo

Most important, the mandatory message digest, or checksum, of all the distfiles needed for the package to compile, confirming they match the original file distributed by the author. This ensures that the distfile retrieved from the Internet has not been corrupted during transfer or altered by a malign force to introduce a security hole. It is best generated using the make makesum command. The digest algorithm used was, at one stage, md5, but that was felt lacking compared to sha1, and so sha1 is now the default algorithm. The distfile size is also generated and stored in new distinfo files. The pkgtools/digest utility calculates all of the digests in the distinfo file, and it provides various different algorithms. At the current time, the algorithms provided are: md5, rmd160, sha1, sha256, sha384 and sha512.

Some packages have different sets of distfiles on a per architecture basis (a good example is www/navigator). These are kept in the same distinfo file and care should be taken when upgrading such a package to ensure distfile information is not lost.

The message digest/checksum for all the official patches found in the patches/ directory (see Section 5.3, “patches/*”) for the package is also stored in the distinfo file. This is a message digest/checksum of all lines in the patch file except the NetBSD RCS Id. This file is generated by invoking make makepatchsum.

5.3. patches/*

This directory contains files that are used by the patch(1) command to modify the sources as distributed in the distribution file into a form that will compile and run perfectly on NetBSD. The files are applied successively in alphabetic order (as returned by a shell “patches/patch-*” glob expansion), so patch-aa is applied before patch-ab, etc.

The patch-?? files should be in diff -bu format, and apply without a fuzz to avoid problems (To force patches to apply with fuzz you can set PATCH_FUZZ_FACTOR=-F2). Furthermore, do not put changes for more than one file into a single patch-file, as this will make future modifications more difficult.

Similar, a file should be patched at most once, not several times by several different patches. If a file needs several patches, they should be combined into one file.

One important thing to mention is to pay attention that no RCS IDs get stored in the patch files, as these will cause problems when later checked into the NetBSD CVS tree. Use the pkgtools/pkgdiff package to avoid these problems.

For even more automation, we recommend using mkpatches from the same package to make a whole set of patches. You just have to backup files before you edit them to filename.orig, e.g. with cp -p filename filename.orig or, easier, by using pkgvi from the same package. If you upgrade a package this way, you can easily compare the new set of patches with the previously existing one with patchdiff.

When you have finished a package, remember to generate the checksums for the patch files by using the make makepatchsum command, see Section 5.2, “distinfo”.

If it is desired to store any patches that should not be committed into pkgsrc, they can be kept outside the pkgsrc tree in the $LOCALPATCHES directory. The directory tree there is expected to have the same “category/package” structure as pkgsrc, and patches are expected to be stored inside these dirs (also known as $LOCALPATCHES/$PKGPATH). For example if you want to keep a private patch for pkgsrc/graphics/png, keep it in $LOCALPATCHES/graphics/png/mypatch. All files in the named directory are expected to be patch files, and they are applied after pkgsrc patches are applied.

5.4. Other mandatory files

  • DESCR

    A multi-line description of the piece of software. This should include any credits where they are due. Please bear in mind that others do not share your sense of humour (or spelling idiosyncrasies), and that others will read everything that you write here.

  • PLIST

    This file governs the files that are installed on your system: all the binaries, manual pages, etc. There are other directives which may be entered in this file, to control the creation and deletion of directories, and the location of inserted files.

5.5. Optional files

  • INSTALL

    Shell script invoked twice during pkg_add. First time after package extraction and before files are moved in place, the second time after the files to install are moved in place. This can be used to do any custom procedures not possible with @exec commands in PLIST. See pkg_add(1) and pkg_create(1) for more information.

  • DEINSTALL

    This script is executed before and after any files are removed. It is this script's responsibility to clean up any additional messy details around the package's installation, since all pkg_delete knows is how to delete the files created in the original distribution. See pkg_delete(1) and pkg_create(1) for more information.

  • MESSAGE

    Display this file after installation of the package. Useful for things like legal notices on almost-free software, etc. Please note that you can modify variables in it easily by using MESSAGE_SUBST in the package's Makefile:

    MESSAGE_SUBST+=  SOMEVAR="somevalue"

    replaces "${SOMEVAR}" with “somevalue” in MESSAGE.

5.6. work*

When you type make the distribution files are unpacked into this directory. It can be removed by running make clean.

This directory is also used to keep various timestamp files.

5.7. files/*

If you have any files that you wish to be placed in the package prior to configuration or building, you could place these files here and use a “${CP}” command in the pre-configure target to achieve this. Alternatively, you could simply diff the file against /dev/null and use the patch mechanism to manage the creation of this file.

5.8. Portability of packages

One appealing feature of pkgsrc is that it runs on many different platforms. As a result, it is important to ensure, where possible, that packages in pkgsrc are portable. There are some particular details you should pay attention to while working on pkgsrc.

5.8.1. ${INSTALL}, ${INSTALL_DATA_DIR}, ...

The BSD-compatible install supplied with some operating systems will not perform more than one operation at a time. As such, you should call “${INSTALL}”, etc. like this:

${INSTALL_DATA_DIR} ${PREFIX}/dir1
${INSTALL_DATA_DIR} ${PREFIX}/dir2

Chapter 6. PLIST issues

Table of Contents

6.1. Miscellaneous
6.2. PLIST_SRC
6.3. PLIST_SUBST
6.4. Perl5 modules
6.5. User Interaction

This section addresses some special issues that one needs to pay attention to when dealing with the PLIST file (or files, see below!).

6.1. Miscellaneous

  • NetBSD RCS Id

    Be sure to add a RCS ID line as the first thing in any PLIST file you write:

    @comment $NetBSD: pkgsrc.html,v 1.3 2003/06/23 13:27:57 grant Exp $

  • ${MACHINE_ARCH}, ${MACHINE_GNU_ARCH}

    Some packages like emacs and perl embed information about which architecture they were built on into the pathnames where they install their file. To handle this case, PLIST will be preprocessed before actually used, and the symbol "${MACHINE_ARCH}" will be replaced by what uname -p gives. The same is done if the string ${MACHINE_GNU_ARCH} is embedded in PLIST somewhere - use this on packages that have GNU autoconf created configure scripts.

    Legacy note: There used to be a symbol "<$ARCH>" that was replaced by the output of uname -m, but that's no longer supported and has been removed.

  • ${OPSYS}, ${LOWER_OPSYS}, ${OS_VERSION}

    Some packages want to embed the OS name and version into some paths. To do this, use these variables in the PLIST:

    • ${OPSYS} - output of "uname -s"
    • ${LOWER_OPSYS} - lowercase common name (eg. "solaris")
    • ${OS_VERSION} - "uname -r"
  • ${PKGLOCALEDIR}

    Packages that install locale files should list them in the PLIST as “${PKGLOCALEDIR}/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/...” instead of “share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/...”. This properly handles the fact that different OS's expect locale files to be either in share or lib by default.

  • Manpage-compression

    Manpages should be installed in compressed form if MANZ is set (in bsd.own.mk), and uncompressed otherwise. To handle this in the PLIST file, the suffix “.gz” is appended/removed automatically for manpages according to MANZ and MANCOMPRESSED being set or not, see above for details. This modification of the PLIST file is done on a copy of it, not PLIST itself.

  • Platform specific and differing PLISTs

    Some packages decide to install a different set of files based on the operating system being used. These differences can be automatically handled by using the following files:

    • PLIST.common
    • PLIST.${OPSYS}
    • PLIST.common_end

    If PLIST.${OPSYS} exists, these files are used instead of PLIST. This allows packages which behave in this way to be handled gracefully. Manually overriding PLIST_SRC for other more exotic uses is also possible.

  • Semi-automatic PLIST generation

    You can use the make print-PLIST command to output a PLIST that matches any new files since the package was extracted. See below for more information on this target.

6.2. PLIST_SRC

To use one or more files as source for the PLIST used in generating the binary package, set the variable PLIST_SRC to the names of that file(s). The files are later concatenated using cat(1), and order of things is important.

6.3. PLIST_SUBST

Similar to MESSAGE_SUBST (see above), you can add variables and their expansions to this variable in the following way:

PLIST_SUBST+=    SOMEVAR="somevalue"

which replaces all occurrences of “${SOMEVAR}” in the PLIST with “somevalue”. For the values which are replaced by default, please look in bsd.pkg.mk (and search for PLIST_SUBST).

6.4. Perl5 modules

Makefile of packages providing perl5 modules should include the makefile fragment lang/perl5/module.mk. It provides a do-configure target for the standard perl configuration for such modules as well as various hooks to tune this configuration. See comments in this file for details.

Perl5 modules will install into different places depending on the version of perl used during the build process. To address this, the NetBSD packages system will append lines to the PLIST corresponding to the files listed in the installed .packlist file generated by most perl5 modules. This is invoked by defining PERL5_PACKLIST to a space-separated list of paths to packlist files:

PERL5_PACKLIST=	${PERL5_SITEARCH}/auto/Pg/.packlist

The variables PERL5_SITELIB, PERL5_SITEARCH, and PERL5_ARCHLIB represent the three locations in which perl5 modules may be installed, and may be used by perl5 packages that don't have a packlist. These three variables are also substituted for in the PLIST.

6.5. User Interaction

Occasionally, packages require interaction from the user, and this can be in a number of ways:

  • help in fetching the distfiles
  • help to configure the package before it is built
  • help during the build process
  • help during the installation of a package

The INTERACTIVE_STAGE definition is provided to notify the pkgsrc mechanism of an interactive stage which will be needed, and this should be set in the package's Makefile. e.g.

INTERACTIVE_STAGE= build

Multiple interactive stages can be specified:

INTERACTIVE_STAGE= configure install

Chapter 7. Notes on fixes for packages

7.1. CPP defines

To port an application to NetBSD, it's usually necessary for the compiler to be able to judge the system on which it's compiling, and we use definitions so that the C pre-processor can do this.

To test whether you are working on a 4.4 BSD-derived system, you should use the BSD definition, which is defined in <sys/param.h> on said systems.

#include <sys/param.h>

and then you can surround the BSD-specific parts of your port using the conditional:

#if (defined(BSD) && BSD >= 199306)
  ...
#endif

Please use the “__NetBSD__” definition sparingly - it should only apply to features of NetBSD that are not present in other 4.4-lite derived BSDs.

7.2. Shared libraries - libtool

pkgsrc supports many different machines, with different object formats like a.out and ELF, and varying abilities to do shared library and dynamic loading at all. To accompany this, varying commands and options have to be passed to the compiler, linker, etc. to get the Right Thing, which can be pretty annoying especially if you don't have all the machines at your hand to test things. The devel/libtool pkg can help here, as it just “knows” how to build both static and dynamic libraries from a set of source files, thus being platform independent.

Here's how to use libtool in a pkg in seven simple steps:

  1. Add USE_LIBTOOL=yes to the package Makefile.

  2. For library objects, use “${LIBTOOL} --mode=compile ${CC}” in place of “${CC}”. You could even add it to the definition of CC, if only libraries are being built in a given Makefile. This one command will build both PIC and non-PIC library objects, so you need not have separate shared and non-shared library rules.

  3. For the linking of the library, remove any “ar”, “ranlib”, and “ld -Bshareable” commands, and use instead:

    ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link ${CC} -o ${.TARGET:.a=.la} ${OBJS:.o=.lo} -rpath ${PREFIX}/lib -version-info major:minor

    Note that the library is changed to have a .la extension, and the objects are changed to have a .lo extension. Change OBJS as necessary. This automatically creates all of the .a, .so.major.minor, and ELF symlinks (if necessary) in the build directory. Be sure to include “-version-info”, especially when major and minor are zero, as libtool will otherwise strip off the shared library version.

    The “-release” option will produce different results for a.out and ELF (excluding symlinks) in only one case. An ELF library of the form “libfoo-release.so.x.y” will have a symlink of “libfoo.so.x.y” on an a.out platform. This is handled automatically.

    The “-rpath argument” is the install directory of the library being built.

    In the PLIST, include all of the .a, .la, and .so, .so.major and .so.major.minor files.

  4. When linking shared object (.so) files, i.e. files that are loaded via dlopen(3), NOT shared libraries, use “-module -avoid-version” to prevent them getting version tacked on.

    PLIST gets the foo.so entry.

  5. When linking programs that depend on these libraries before they are installed, preface the cc or ld line with “${LIBTOOL} --mode=link”, and it will find the correct libraries (static or shared), but please be aware that libtool will not allow you to specify a relative path in -L (such as “-L../somelib”), because it expects you to change that argument to be the .la file. e.g.

    ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link ${CC} -o someprog -L../somelib -lsomelib

    should be changed to:

    ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link ${CC} -o someprog ../somelib/somelib.la

    and it will do the right thing with the libraries.

  6. When installing libraries, preface the install or cp command with “${LIBTOOL} --mode=install”, and change the library name to .la. e.g.

    ${LIBTOOL} --mode=install ${BSD_INSTALL_DATA} ${SOMELIB:.a=.la} ${PREFIX}/lib

    This will install the static .a, shared library, any needed symlinks, and run ldconfig.

7.3. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool

Add USE_LIBTOOL=yes and LTCONFIG_OVERRIDE=${WRKSRC}/ltconfig to the package Makefile as the quick way to bypass the pkg's own libtool. The pkg's own libtool is created by ltconfig script at do-configure target. If USE_LIBTOOL and LTCONFIG_OVERRIDE are defined, the specified ltconfig is overridden, using devel/libtool instead of the pkg's own libtool. For newer versions of libtool (without ltconfig) it may be necessary to use LIBTOOL_OVERRIDE=${WRKSRC}/libtool instead.

If your package makes use of the platform independent library for loading dynamic shared objects, that comes with libtool (libltdl), you should include the libtool buildlink2.mk (and set USE_BUILDLINK2=YES).

Some packages use libtool incorrectly so that the package may not work or build in some circumstances. Some of the more common errors are:

  • The inclusion of a shared object (-module) as a dependent library in an executable or library. This in itself isn't a problem if one of two things has been done:
    1. The shared object is named correctly, i.e. libfoo.la, not foo.la
    2. The -dlopen option is used when linking an executable.
  • The use of libltdl without the correct calls to initialisation routines. The function lt_dlinit() should be called and the macro LTDL_SET_PRELOADED_SYMBOLS included in executables.

7.4. GNU Autoconf/Automake

If a package needs GNU autoconf or automake to be executed to regenerate the configure script and Makefile.in makefile templates, then they should be executed in a pre-configure target. Two Makefile fragments are provided in pkgsrc/mk/autoconf.mk and pkgsrc/mk/automake.mk to help dealing with these tools. See comments in these files for details.

For packages that need only autoconf:

AUTOCONF_REQD=	2.50	# if default version is not good enough
...

pre-configure:
	cd ${WRKSRC}; ${AUTOCONF}

...
.include "../../mk/autoconf.mk"

and for packages that need automake and autoconf:

AUTOMAKE_REQD=	1.7.1	# if default version is not good enough
...

pre-configure:
	cd ${WRKSRC};						\
	${ACLOCAL};						\
	${AUTOHEADER};						\
	${AUTOMAKE} -a --foreign -i;				\
	${AUTOCONF}

...
.include "../mk/automake.mk"

There are times when the configure process makes additional changes to the generated files, which then causes the build process to try to re-execute the automake sequence. This is prevented by touching various files in the configure stage. If this causes problems with your package you can set AUTOMAKE_OVERRIDE=NO in the package Makefile.

7.5. Package configuration files

Packages should be taught to look for their configuration files in ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}, which is passed through to the configure and build processes. PKG_SYSCONFDIR may be customized in various ways by setting other make variables:

  • PKG_SYSCONFBASE is the main config directory under which all package configuration files are to be found. This defaults to ${PREFIX}/etc, but may be overridden in /etc/mk.conf.

  • PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR is the subdirectory of PKG_SYSCONFBASE under which the configuration files for a particular package may be found, e.g. the Apache configuration files may all be found under the httpd/ subdirectory of ${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}. This should be set in the package Makefile.

  • By default, PKG_SYSCONFDIR=${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}/${PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR}, but this may be overridden by setting PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR} for a particular package, where PKG_SYSCONFVAR defaults to ${PKGBASE}. This is not meant to be set by a package Makefile, but is reserved for users who wish to override the PKG_SYSCONFDIR setting for a particular package with a special location.

The only variables that users should customize are PKG_SYSCONFBASE and PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR}. Users will typically want to set PKG_SYSCONFBASE to /etc, or to accept the default location of ${PREFIX}/etc.

7.6. Feedback to the author

If you have found any bugs in the package you make available, if you had to do special steps to make it run under NetBSD or if you enhanced the software in various other ways, be sure to report these changes back to the original author of the program! With that kind of support, the next release of the program can incorporate these fixes, and people not using the NetBSD packages system can win from your efforts.

Support the idea of free software!

Chapter 8. The build process

Table of Contents

8.1. Program location
8.2. Main targets
8.3. Other helpful targets

The basic steps for building a program are always the same. First the program's source (distfile) must be brought to the local system and then extracted. After any patches to compile properly on NetBSD are applied, the software can be configured, then built (usually by compiling), and finally the generated binaries, etc. can be put into place on the system. These are exactly the steps performed by the NetBSD package system, which is implemented as a series of targets in a central Makefile, pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.mk.

8.1. Program location

Before outlining the process performed by the NetBSD package system in the next section, here's a brief discussion on where programs are installed, and which variables influence this.

The automatic variable PREFIX indicates where all files of the final program shall be installed. It is usually set to LOCALBASE (/usr/pkg), or CROSSBASE for pkgs in the “cross” category, though its value becomes that of X11BASE if USE_IMAKE or USE_X11BASE is set. The value of PREFIX needs to be put into the various places in the program's source where paths to these files are encoded. See Section 5.3, “patches/*” and Section 7.2, “Shared libraries - libtool” for more details.

When choosing which of these variables to use, follow the following rules:

  • PREFIX always points to the location where the current pkg will be installed. When referring to a pkg's own installation path, use “${PREFIX}”.

  • LOCALBASE is where all non-X11 pkgs are installed. If you need to construct a -I or -L argument to the compiler to find includes and libraries installed by another non-X11 pkg, use “${LOCALBASE}”.

  • X11BASE is where the actual X11 distribution (from xsrc, etc.) is installed. When looking for standard X11 includes (not those installed by a pkg), use “${X11BASE}”.

  • X11 based pkgs are special in that they may be installed in either X11BASE or LOCALBASE. To install X11 packages in LOCALBASE, simply install pkgtools/xpkgwedge. If you need to find includes or libraries installed by a pkg that has USE_IMAKE or USE_X11BASE in its pkg Makefile, you need to use both${X11BASE}” and “${LOCALBASE}”.

  • X11PREFIX should be used to refer to the installed location of an X11 package. X11PREFIX will be set to X11BASE if xpkgwedge is not installed, and to LOCALBASE if xpkgwedge is installed.

  • If xpkgwedge is installed, it is possible to have some packages installed in X11BASE and some in LOCALBASE. To determine the prefix of an installed package, the EVAL_PREFIX definition can be used. It takes pairs in the format “DIRNAME=<package>”, and the make(1) variable DIRNAME will be set to the prefix of the installed package <package>, or “${X11PREFIX}” if the package is not installed.

    This is best illustrated by example.

    The following lines are taken from pkgsrc/wm/scwm/Makefile:

    EVAL_PREFIX+=		GTKDIR=gtk+
    CONFIGURE_ARGS+=	--with-guile-prefix=${LOCALBASE}	\
    			--with-gtk-prefix="${GTKDIR}"		\
    			--enable-multibyte

    Specific defaults can be defined for the packages evaluated using EVAL_PREFIX, by using a definition of the form:

    GTKDIR_DEFAULT= ${LOCALBASE}

    where GTKDIR corresponds to the first definition in the EVAL_PREFIX pair.

8.2. Main targets

The main targets used during the build process defined in bsd.pkg.mk are:

  • fetch

    This will check if the file(s) given in the variables DISTFILES and PATCHFILES (as defined in the package's Makefile) are present on the local system in /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles. If they are not present, an attempt will be made to fetch them using commands of the form:

    ${FETCH_CMD} ${FETCH_BEFORE_ARGS} ${site}${file} ${FETCH_AFTER_ARGS}

    where ${site} varies through several possibilities in turn: first, MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE is tried, then the sites specified in either SITES_file if defined, else MASTER_SITES or PATCH_SITES, as applies, then finally the value of MASTER_SITE_BACKUP. The order of all except the first can be optionally sorted by the user, via setting either MASTER_SORT_AWK or MASTER_SORT_REGEX.

  • checksum

    After the distfile(s) are fetched, their checksum is generated and compared with the checksums stored in the distinfo file. If the checksums don't match, the build is aborted. This is to ensure the same distfile is used for building, and that the distfile wasn't changed, e.g. by some malign force, deliberately changed distfiles on the master distribution site or network lossage.

  • extract

    When the distfiles are present on the local system, they need to be extracted, as they are usually in the form of some compressed archive format, most commonly .tar.gz. If only some of the distfiles need to be uncompressed, the files to be uncompressed should be put into EXTRACT_ONLY. If the distfiles are not in .tar.gz format, they can be extracted by setting EXTRACT_CMD, EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS and/or EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS.

  • patch

    After extraction, all the patches named by the PATCHFILES, those present in the patches subdirectory of the package as well as in $LOCALPATCHES/$PKGPATH (e.g. /usr/local/patches/graphics/png) are applied. Patchfiles ending in .Z or .gz are uncompressed before they are applied, files ending in .orig or .rej are ignored. Any special options to patch(1) can be handed in PATCH_DIST_ARGS. See Section 5.3, “patches/*” for more details.

    By default patch is given special args to make it fail if the patches with some lines of fuzz. Please fix (regen) the patches so that they apply cleanly. The rationale behind this is that patches that apply cleanly may end up being applied in the wrong place, and cause severe harm there.

  • configure

    Most pieces of software need information on the header files, system calls, and library routines which are available in NetBSD. This is the process known as configuration, and is usually automated. In most cases, a script is supplied with the source, and its invocation results in generation of header files, Makefiles, etc.

    If the program's distfile contains its own configure script, this can be invoked by setting HAS_CONFIGURE. If the configure script is a GNU autoconf script, GNU_CONFIGURE should be specified instead. In either case, any arguments to the configure script can be specified in the CONFIGURE_ARGS variable, and the configure script's name can be set in CONFIGURE_SCRIPT if it differs from the default “configure”.

    If the program uses an Imakefile for configuration, the appropriate steps can be invoked by setting USE_IMAKE to “YES”. (If you only want the package installed in $X11PREFIX but xmkmf not being run, set USE_X11BASE instead!)

  • build

    Once configuration has taken place, the software can be built on NetBSD by invoking $MAKE_PROGRAM on $MAKEFILE with $ALL_TARGET as the target to build. The default MAKE_PROGRAM is “gmake” if USE_GMAKE is set, “make” otherwise. MAKEFILE is set to “Makefile” by default, and ALL_TARGET defaults to “all”. Any of these variables can be set to change the default build process.

  • install

    Once the build stage has completed, the final step is to install the software in public directories, for users. As in the build-target, $MAKE_PROGRAM is invoked on $MAKEFILE here, but with the $INSTALL_TARGET instead, the latter defaulting to “install” (plus “install.man”, if USE_IMAKE is set).

If no target is specified, the default is “build”. If a subsequent stage is requested, all prior stages are made: e.g. make build will also perform the equivalent of:

make fetch
make checksum
make extract
make patch
make configure
make build

8.3. Other helpful targets

  • pre/post-*

    For any of the main targets described in the previous section, two auxiliary targets exist with “pre-” and “post-” used as a prefix for the main target's name. These targets are invoked before and after the main target is called, allowing extra configuration or installation steps, for example, which program's configure script or install target omitted.

  • do-*

    Should one of the main targets do the wrong thing, and should there be no variable to fix this, you can redefine it with the do-* target. (Note that redefining the target itself instead of the do-* target is a bad idea, as the pre-* and post-* targets won't be called anymore, etc.) You will not usually need to do this.

  • reinstall

    If you did a make install and you noticed some file was not installed properly, you can repeat the installation with this target, which will ignore the “already installed” flag.

  • deinstall

    This target does a pkg_delete(1) in the current directory, effectively de-installing the package. The following variables can be used either on the command line or in /etc/mk.conf to tune the behaviour:

    • PKG_VERBOSE

      Add a "-v" to the pkg_delete(1) command.

    • DEINSTALLDEPENDS

      Remove all packages that require (depend on) the given package. This can be used to remove any packages that may have been pulled in by a given package, e.g. if make deinstall DEINSTALLDEPENDS=1 is done in pkgsrc/x11/kde, this is likely to remove whole KDE. Works by adding “-R” to the pkg_delete command line.

  • update

    This target causes the current package to be updated to the latest version. The package and all depending packages first get de-installed, then current versions of the corresponding packages get compiled and installed. This is similar to manually noting which packages are currently installed, then performing a series of make deinstall and make install (or whatever UPDATE_TARGET is set to) for these packages.

    You can use the “update” target to resume package updating in case a previous make update was interrupted for some reason. However, in this case, make sure you don't call make clean or otherwise remove the list of dependent packages in WRKDIR. Otherwise you lose the ability to automatically update the current package along with the dependent packages you have installed.

    Resuming an interrupted make update will only work as long as the package tree remains unchanged. If the source code for one of the packages to be updated has been changed, resuming make update will most certainly fail!

    The following variables can be used either on the command line or in /etc/mk.conf to alter the behaviour of make update:

    • UPDATE_TARGET

      Install target to recursively use for the updated package and the dependent packages. Defaults to DEPENDS_TARGET if set, “install” otherwise for make update. e.g. make update UPDATE_TARGET=package

    • NOCLEAN

      Don't clean up after updating. Useful if you want to leave the work sources of the updated packages around for inspection or other purposes. Be sure you eventually clean up the source tree (see the “clean-update” target below) or you may run into troubles with old source code still lying around on your next make or make update.

    • REINSTALL

      Deinstall each package before installing (making DEPENDS_TARGET). This may be necessary if the “clean-update” target (see below) was called after interrupting a running make update.

    • DEPENDS_TARGET

      Allows you to disable recursion and hardcode the target for packages. The default is “update” for the update target, facilitating a recursive update of prerequisite packages. Only set DEPENDS_TARGET if you want to disable recursive updates. Use UPDATE_TARGET instead to just set a specific target for each package to be installed during make update (see above).

  • clean-update

    Clean the source tree for all packages that would get updated if make update was called from the current directory. This target should not be used if the current package (or any of its depending packages) have already been de-installed (e.g., after calling make update) or you may lose some packages you intended to update. As a rule of thumb: only use this target before the first time you run make update and only if you have a dirty package tree (e.g., if you used NOCLEAN).

    If you unsure about whether your tree is clean you can either perform a make clean at the top of the tree, or use the following sequence of commands from the directory of the package you want to update (before running make update for the first time, otherwise you lose all the packages you wanted to update!):

    # make clean-update
    # make clean CLEANDEPENDS=YES
    # make update

    The following variables can be used either on the command line or in /etc/mk.conf to alter the behaviour of make clean-update:

    • CLEAR_DIRLIST

      After make clean, do not reconstruct the list of directories to update for this package. Only use this if make update successfully installed all packages you wanted to update. Normally, this is done automatically on make update, but may have been suppressed by the NOCLEAN variable (see above).

  • info

    This target invokes pkg_info for the current package. You can use this to check which version of a package is installed.

  • readme

    This target generates a README.html file, which can be viewed using a browser such as www/navigator or www/lynx. The generated files contain references to any packages which are in the PACKAGES directory on the local host. The generated files can be made to refer to URLs based on FTP_PKG_URL_HOST and FTP_PKG_URL_DIR. For example, if I wanted to generate README.html files which pointed to binary packages on the local machine, in the directory /usr/packages, set FTP_PKG_URL_HOST=file://localhost and FTP_PKG_URL_DIR=/usr/packages. The ${PACKAGES} directory and its subdirectories will be searched for all the binary packages.

  • readme-all

    Use this target to create a file README-all.html which contains a list of all packages currently available in the NetBSD Packages Collection, together with the category they belong to and a short description. This file is compiled from the pkgsrc/*/README.html files, so be sure to run this after a make readme.

  • cdrom-readme

    This is very much the same as the “readme” target (see above), but is to be used when generating a pkgsrc tree to be written to a CD-ROM. This target also produces README.html files, and can be made to refer to URLs based on CDROM_PKG_URL_HOST and CDROM_PKG_URL_DIR.

  • show-distfiles

    This target shows which distfiles and patchfiles are needed to build the package. (DISTFILES and PATCHFILES, but not patches/*)

  • show-downlevel

    This target shows nothing if the package is not installed. If a version of this package is installed, but is not the version provided in this version of pkgsrc, then a warning message is displayed. This target can be used to show which of your installed packages are downlevel, and so the old versions can be deleted, and the current ones added.

  • show-pkgsrc-dir

    This target shows the directory in the pkgsrc hierarchy from which the package can be built and installed. This may not be the same directory as the one from which the package was installed. This target is intended to be used by people who may wish to upgrade many packages on a single host, and can be invoked from the top-level pkgsrc Makefile by using the “show-host-specific-pkgs” target.

  • show-installed-depends

    This target shows which installed packages match the current package's DEPENDS. Useful if out of date DEPENDS are causing build problems.

  • check-shlibs

    After a package is installed, check all its binaries and (on ELF platforms) shared libraries to see if they find the shared libs they need. Run by default if PKG_DEVELOPER is set in /etc/mk.conf.

  • print-PLIST

    After a “make install” from a new or upgraded pkg, this prints out an attempt to generate a new PLIST from a find -newer work/.extract_done. An attempt is made to care for shared libs etc., but it is strongly recommended to review the result before putting it into PLIST. On upgrades, it's useful to diff the output of this command against an already existing PLIST file.

    If the package installs files via tar(1) or other methods that don't update file access times, be sure to add these files manually to your PLIST, as “find -newer” won't catch them!

  • bulk-package

    Used to do bulk builds. If an appropriate binary package already exists, no action is taken. If not, this target will compile, install and package it (and it's depends, if PKG_DEPENDS is set properly. See Section 4.3.1, “Configuration”. After creating the binary package, the sources, the just-installed package and it's required packages are removed, preserving free disk space.

  • bulk-install

    Used during bulk-installs to install required packages. If an appropriate binary package is available, it will be installed via pkg_add. If not, make bulk-package will be executed, but the installed binary not be removed. A binary package is “appropriate” to be installed via pkg_add if:

    • None of the package's files (Makefile, ...) were modified since it was built.
    • None of the package's required (binary) packages were modified since it was built.

Chapter 9. buildlink2 methodology

buildlink2 is a pkgsrc framework that controls what headers and libraries are seen by a package's configure and build processes. This is implemented in a two step process:

  1. Symlink headers and libraries for dependencies into BUILDLINK_DIR, which by default is a subdirectory of WRKDIR.

  2. Create wrapper scripts that are used in place of the normal compiler tools that translate “-I${LOCALBASE}/include” and “-L${LOCALBASE}/lib” into references to BUILDLINK_DIR.

This normalizes the environment in which a package is built so that the package may be built consistently despite what may other software may installed. Please refer to pkgsrc/mk/buildlink2/buildlink2.txt for some FAQs and answers regarding buildlink2, and to pkgsrc/mk/buildlink2/README for a description of how buildlink2 is implemented in pkgsrc.

9.1. Converting packages to use buildlink2

The process of converting packages to use the buildlink2 framework is fairly straightforward. The package Makefile must define USE_BUILDLINK2. If a dependency on a particular package, e.g. foo, is required for its libraries and headers, then we replace:

DEPENDS+=	foo>=1.1.0:../../category/foo

with

.include "../../category/foo/buildlink2.mk"

There are several buildlink2.mk files in pkgsrc/mk that handle special package issues:

  • motif.buildlink2.mk checks for a system-provided Motif installation or adds a dependency on x11/lesstif or x11/openmotif;

  • ossaudio.buildlink2.mk defines several variables that may be used by packages that use the Open Sound System (OSS) API;

  • pthread.buildlink2.mk uses the value of PTHREAD_OPTS and checks for native pthreads or adds a dependency on devel/pth as needed;

  • xaw.buildlink2.mk uses the value of XAW_TYPE to choose a particular Athena widgets library.

The comments in those buildlink2.mk files provide a more complete description of how to use them properly.

9.2. Writing buildlink2.mk files

A simple example of a buildlink2.mk file for a mythical package foo follows:

BUILDLINK_PACKAGES+=          foo
BUILDLINK_PKGBASE.foo=        foo
BUILDLINK_DEPENDS.foo?=       foo>=1.0
BUILDLINK_PKGSRCDIR.foo?=     ../../category/foo

EVAL_PREFIX+=                 BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo=foo
BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo_DEFAULT= ${LOCALBASE}
BUILDLINK_FILES.foo=          include/foo.h
BUILDLINK_FILES.foo+=         include/bar.h
BUILDLINK_FILES.foo+=         lib/libfoo.*

BUILDLINK_TARGETS+=           foo-buildlink

foo-buildlink: _BUILDLINK_USE

The first section controls how the dependency on foo is added. The dependency is constructed from four parts:

  1. BUILDLINK_PACKAGES is the global list of packages for which dependencies will be added by buildlink2;

  2. BUILDLINK_DEPENDS.foo is the actual dependency recorded in the installed package;

  3. BUILDLINK_PKGSRCDIR.foo is the location of the foo pkgsrc directory;

  4. BUILDLINK_DEPMETHOD.foo (not shown above) controls whether we use BUILD_DEPENDS or DEPENDS to add the foo dependency, where the full dependency is added if BUILDLINK_DEPMETHOD.foo contains “full”.

The second section controls which files are linked into BUILDLINK_DIR:

  1. BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo is the installation prefix of the package which we derive by using EVAL_PREFIX;

  2. BUILDLINK_FILES.foo is a list of files (shell globs allowed) relative to the BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo directory and will be symlinked into BUILDLINK_DIR;

  3. BUILDLINK_FILES_CMD.foo (not shown above) is a shell pipeline that outputs a list of files relative to the BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo directory and will be symlinked into BUILDLINK_DIR.

The remaining parts create the “foo-buildlink” target that actually performs the symlinking and adds the “foo-buildlink” target to BUILDLINK_TARGETS, which is the global list of targets to execute at do-buildlink time.

Chapter 10. Debugging

To check out all the gotchas when building a package, here are the steps that I do in order to get a package working. Please note this is basically the same as what was explained in the previous sections, only with some debugging aids.

  • Be sure to set PKG_DEVELOPER=1 in /etc/mk.conf

  • Install pkgtools/url2pkg and run

    # url2pkg http://www.example.com/path/to/distfile.tar.gz
  • Edit the Makefile as requested.

  • Fill in DESCR

  • Run make configure

  • Add any dependencies glimpsed from the configure step to the package's Makefile.

  • Make the package compile, doing multiple rounds of

    # make
    # pkgvi ${WRKSRC}/some/file/that/does/not/compile
    # mkpatches
    # patchdiff
    # mv ${WRKDIR}/.newpatches/* patches
    # make mps
    # make clean

    Doing as non-root user will ensure that no files are modified that shouldn't be, especially during the build phase.

  • Look at Makefile, fix if necessary; see Section 5.1, “Makefile”.

  • Generate a PLIST:

    # make install
    # make print-PLIST > PLIST
    # make deinstall
    # make install
    # make deinstall

    You usually need to be root to do this. Look if there are any files left:

    # make print-PLIST

    If this reveals any files that are missing in PLIST, add them.

  • Now that the PLIST is OK, install the package again and make a binary package:

    # make reinstall && make package
  • Delete the installed package:

    # pkg_delete blub
  • Repeat the above find command, which shouldn't find anything now:

    # make print-PLIST
  • Reinstall the binary package:

    # pkgadd .../blub.tgz
  • Play with it. Make sure everything works.

  • Run pkglint from pkgtools/pkglint, and fix the problems it reports.

    # pkglint
  • Submit (or commit, if you have cvs access); see Chapter 12, Submitting and Committing.

Chapter 11. FAQs & features of the package system

11.1. Packages using GNU autoconf

If your package uses GNU autoconf created configure scripts, add the following to your package's Makefile:

GNU_CONFIGURE= yes

Note that this appends “--prefix=${PREFIX}” to CONFIGURE_ARGS, so you don't have to do that yourself, but may not be desired.

11.2. Other distrib methods than .tar.gz

If your package uses a different distribution method from .tar.gz, take a look at the package for editors/sam, which uses a gzipped shell archive (shar), but the quick solution is to set EXTRACT_SUFX to the name after the DISTNAME field, and add the following to your package's Makefile:

EXTRACT_SUFX=   .msg.gz
EXTRACT_CMD=            zcat
EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS=
EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS=     |sh

11.3. Packages not creating their own subdirectory

Your package doesn't create a subdirectory for itself (like GNU software does, for instance), but extracts itself in the current directory: see editors/sam again, but the quick answer is:

WRKSRC=		${WRKDIR}

Please note that the old:

NO_WRKSUBDIR=   yes

has been deprecated and should not be used.

11.4. Custom configuration process

Your package uses a weird Configure script, eg. sysutils/top. The quick answer is:

HAS_CONFIGURE=          yes
CONFIGURE_SCRIPT=       Configure
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=        netbsd13

11.5. Packages not building in their DISTNAME directory

Your package builds in a different directory from its base DISTNAME (see lang/tcl and x11/tk).

WRKSRC=         ${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}/unix

11.6. How to fetch all distfiles at once

You would like to download all the distfiles in a single batch from work or university, where you can't run a make fetch. There is an archive of distfiles on ftp.NetBSD.org, but downloading the entire directory may not be appropriate.

The answer here is to do a make fetch-list in /usr/pkgsrc, carry the resulting list to your machine at work/school and use it there If you don't have a NetBSD-compatible ftp(1) (like lukemftp) at work, don't forget to set FETCH_CMD to something that fetches an URL:

At home:

% cd /usr/pkgsrc
% make fetch-list FETCH_CMD=wget DISTDIR=/tmp/distfiles >/tmp/fetch.sh
% scp /tmp/fetch.sh work:/tmp

At work:

% sh /tmp/fetch.sh

then tar up /tmp/distfiles and take it home.

If you have a machine running NetBSD, and you want to get all distfiles (even ones that aren't for your machine architecture), you can do so by using the above-mentioned make fetch-list approach, or fetch the distfiles directly by running:

% make mirror-distfiles

If you even decide to ignore NO_{SRC,BIN}_ON_{FTP,CDROM}, then you can get everything by running:

% make fetch NO_SKIP=yes

11.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall

If you are sitting behind a firewall which does not allow direct connections to Internet hosts (i.e. non-NAT), you may specify the relevant proxy hosts. This is done using an environment variable in the form of a URL e.g. in Amdahl, the machine “orpheus.amdahl.com” is one of the firewalls, and it uses port 80 as the proxy port number. So the proxy environment variables are:

ftp_proxy=ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/
http_proxy=http://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/

11.8. If your patch contains an RCS ID

See Section 5.3, “patches/*” for information on how to remove RCS IDs from patch files.

11.9. How to pull in variables from /etc/mk.conf

The problem with package-defined variables that can be overridden via MAKECONF or /etc/mk.conf is that make(1) expands a variable as it is used, but evaluates preprocessor like statements (.if, .ifdef and .ifndef) as they are read. So, to use any variable (which may be set in /etc/mk.conf) in one of the .if* statements, the file /etc/mk.conf must be included before that .if* statement.

Rather than have a number of ad-hoc ways of including /etc/mk.conf, should it exist, or MAKECONF, should it exist, include the pkgsrc/mk/bsd.prefs.mk file in the package Makefile before any preprocessor-like .if, .ifdef, or .ifndef statements:

.include "../../mk/bsd.prefs.mk"

.if defined(USE_MENUS)
  ...
.endif

11.10. Is there a mailing list for pkg-related discussion?

Yes, is the list for discussing package related issues. To subscribe do:

% echo subscribe tech-pkg | mail majordomo@NetBSD.org

11.11. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?

This depends on which utility is used to retrieve distfiles. From bsd.pkg.mk, FETCH_CMD is assigned the first available command from the following list:

/usr/bin/fetch
${LOCALBASE}/bsd/bin/ftp
/usr/bin/ftp

On a default NetBSD install, this will be /usr/bin/ftp, which automatically tries passive connections first, and falls back to active connections if the server refuses to do passive. For the other tools, add the following to your /etc/mk.conf file: PASSIVE_FETCH=1.

Having that option present will prevent /usr/bin/ftp from falling back to active transfers.

11.12. Dependencies on other packages

Your package may depend on some other package being present - and there are various ways of expressing this dependency. NetBSD supports the BUILD_DEPENDS and DEPENDS definitions, as well as dependencies via buildlink2.mk (see Chapter 9, buildlink2 methodology).

The basic difference between the two definitions is as follows: The DEPENDS definition registers that pre-requisite in the binary package, whilst the BUILD_DEPENDS definition does not.

This means that if you only need a package present whilst you are building, it should be noted as a BUILD_DEPENDS.

The format for a BUILD_DEPENDS and a DEPENDS definition is:

<pre-req-package-name>:../../<category>/<pre-req-package>

Please note that the “pre-req-package-name” may include any of the wildcard version numbers recognised by pkg_info(1).

  1. If your package needs to use another package to build itself, this is specified using the BUILD_DEPENDS definition.

    BUILD_DEPENDS+=  autoconf-2.13:../../devel/autoconf
  2. If your package needs a library with which to link, this is specified using the DEPENDS definition. An example of this is the print/lyx package, which uses the xpm library, version 3.4j to build.

    DEPENDS+=       xpm-3.4j:../../graphics/xpm

    You can also use wildcards in package dependences:

    DEPENDS+=	xpm-[0-9]*:../../graphics/xpm

    Note that such wildcard dependencies are retained when creating binary packages. The dependency is checked when installing the binary package and any package which matches the pattern will be used. Wildcard dependencies should be used with care.

    The -[0-9]* should be used instead of -* to avoid potentially ambiguous matches such as tk-postgresql matching a tk-* DEPENDS.

  3. If your package needs some executable to be able to run correctly, this is specified using the DEPENDS definition. The print/lyx package needs to be able to execute the latex binary from the teTeX package when it runs, and that is specified:

    DEPENDS+=        teTeX-[0-9]*:../../print/teTeX

    The comment about wildcard dependencies from previous paragraph applies here, too.

If your package needs files from another package to build, see the first part of the “do-configure” target print/ghostscript5 package (it relies on the jpeg sources being present in source form during the build):

if [ ! -e ${_PKGSRCDIR}/graphics/jpeg/${WRKDIR:T}/jpeg-6b ]; then \
	cd ${_PKGSRCDIR}/../../graphics/jpeg && ${MAKE} extract;              \
fi

If you build any other packages that way, please make sure the working files are deleted too when this package's working files are cleaned up. The easiest way to do so is by adding a pre-clean target:

pre-clean:
	cd ${_PKGSRCDIR}/../../graphics/jpeg && ${MAKE} clean

Please also note the BUILD_USES_MSGFMT and BUILD_USES_GETTEXT_M4 definitions, which are provided as convenience definitions. The former works out whether msgfmt(1) is part of the base system, and, if it isn't, installs the devel/gettext package. The latter adds a build dependency on either an installed version of an older gettext package, or if it isn't, installs the devel/gettext-m4 package.

11.13. Conflicts with other packages

Your package may conflict with other packages a user might already have installed on his system, e.g. if your package installs the same set of files like another package in our pkgsrc tree.

In this case you can set CONFLICTS to a space separated list of packages (including version string) your package conflicts with.

For example x11/Xaw3d and x11/Xaw-Xpm install provide the same shared library, thus you set in pkgsrc/x11/Xaw3d/Makefile:

CONFLICTS=      Xaw-Xpm-[0-9]*

and in pkgsrc/x11/Xaw-Xpm/Makefile:

CONFLICTS=      Xaw3d-[0-9]*

Packages will automatically conflict with other packages with the name prefix and a different version string. “Xaw3d-1.5” e.g. will automatically conflict with the older version “Xaw3d-1.3”.

11.14. Software which has a WWW Home Page

The NetBSD packages system now supports a variable called HOMEPAGE. If the software being packaged has a home page, the Makefile should include the URL for that page in the HOMEPAGE variable. The definition of the variable should be placed immediately after the MAINTAINER variable.

11.15. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name

Sometimes authors of a software package make some modifications after the software was released, and they put up a new distfile without changing the package's version number. If a package is already in pkgsrc at that time, the md5 checksum will no longer match. The correct way to work around this is to update the package's md5 checksum to match the package on the master site (beware, any mirrors may not be up to date yet!), and to remove the old distfile from ftp.NetBSD.org's /pub/NetBSD/packages/distfiles directory. Furthermore, a mail to the package's author seems appropriate making sure the distfile was really updated on purpose, and that no trojan horse or so crept in.

11.16. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?

When compiling the pkgtools/pkg_install package, you get the error from make that it doesn't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc? This indicates that you don't have installed the “text” set on your machine (nroff, ...). It is recommended to do that.

In the case of the pkgtools/pkg_install package, you can get away with setting NOMAN=YES either in the environment or in /etc/mk.conf.

11.17. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing package

When making fixes to an existing package it can be useful to change the version number in PKGNAME. To avoid conflicting with future versions by the original author, a “nb1”, “nb2”, ... suffix can be used on package versions by setting PKGREVISION=1 (2,. ..). The “nb” is treated like a “.” by the pkg tools. e.g.

DISTNAME=	foo-17.42
PKGREVISION=	9

will result in a PKGNAME of “foo-17.42nb9”.

When a new release of the package is released, the PKGREVISION should be removed. e.g. on a new minor release of the above package, things should be like:

DISTNAME=	foo-17.43

11.18. Could not find bsd.own.mk - what's wrong?

You didn't install the compiler set, comp.tgz, when you installed your NetBSD machine. Please get it and install it, by extracting it in /:

# cd /
# tar --unlink -zxvpf .../comp.tgz

comp.tgz is part of every NetBSD release. Get the one that corresponds to your release (determine via uname -r).

11.19. Restricted packages

Some licenses restrict how software may be re-distributed. In order to satisfy these restrictions, the package system defines five make variables that can be set to note these restrictions:

  • RESTRICTED

    This variable should be set whenever a restriction exists (regardless of its kind). Set this variable to a string containing the reason for the restriction.

  • NO_BIN_ON_CDROM

    Binaries may not be placed on CD-ROM. Set this variable to ${RESTRICTED} whenever a binary package may not be included on a CD-ROM.

  • NO_BIN_ON_FTP

    Binaries may not be placed on an FTP server. Set this variable to ${RESTRICTED} whenever a binary package may not not be made available on the Internet.

  • NO_SRC_ON_CDROM

    Distfiles may not be placed on CD-ROM. Set this variable to ${RESTRICTED} if re-distribution of the source code or other distfile(s) is not allowed on CD-ROMs.

  • NO_SRC_ON_FTP

    Distfiles may not be placed on FTP. Set this variable to ${RESTRICTED} if re-distribution of the source code or other distfile(s) via the Internet is not allowed.

Please note that the use of NO_PACKAGE, IGNORE, NO_CDROM, or other generic make variables to denote restrictions is deprecated, because they unconditionally prevent users from generating binary packages!

11.20. Packages using (n)curses

Some packages need curses functionality that wasn't present in NetBSD's own curses prior to 1.4Y.

If ../../devel/ncurses/buildlink2.mk is included in a package's Makefile, then a curses library and headers with ncurses functionality are linked into ${BUILDLINK_DIR} at pre-configure time. If ncurses is actually required, then define USE_NCURSES in the package's Makefile.

11.21. Automated security check

Please be aware that there can often be bugs in third-party software, and some of these bugs can leave a machine vulnerable to exploitation by attackers. In an effort to lessen the exposure, the NetBSD packages team maintains a database of known-exploits to packages which have at one time been included in pkgsrc. The database can be downloaded automatically, and a security audit of all packages installed on a system can take place. To do this, install the security/audit-packages package. It has two components:

  1. download-vulnerability-list”, an easy way to download a list of the security vulnerabilities information. This list is kept up to date by the NetBSD security officer and the NetBSD packages team, and is distributed from the NetBSD ftp server:

    ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/distfiles/vulnerabilities

  2. audit-packages”, an easy way to audit the current machine, checking each vulnerability which is known. If a vulnerable package is installed, it will be shown by output to stdout, including a description of the type of vulnerability, and a URL containing more information.

Use of the audit-packages package is strongly recommended.

The following message is displayed as part of the audit-packages installation procedure:

======================================================================
You may wish to have the vulnerabilities file downloaded daily so that
it remains current.  This may be done by adding an appropriate entry
to the root users crontab(5) entry.  For example the entry
	
# download vulnerabilities file
0 3 * * * ${PREFIX}/sbin/download-vulnerability-list >/dev/null 2>&1
	
will update the vulnerability list every day at 3AM.
	
In addition, you may wish to run the package audit from the daily
security script.  This may be accomplished by adding the following
lines to /etc/security.local
	
if [ -x ${PREFIX}/sbin/audit-packages ]; then
	${PREFIX}/sbin/audit-packages
fi
======================================================================

Note to package developers: When a vulnerability is found, this should be noted in localsrc/security/advisories/pkg-vulnerabilities, and after the commit of that file, it should be copied to /pub/NetBSD/packages/distfiles/vulnerabilities on ftp.NetBSD.org.

11.22. What's the proper way to create an account from a package?

There are two make variables used to control the creation of package-specific groups and users at pre-install time. The first is PKG_GROUPS, which is a list of group[:groupid] elements, where the groupid is optional. The second is PKG_USERS, which is a list of elements of the form:

user:group[:[userid][:[description][:[home][:shell]]]]

where only the user and group are required, the rest being optional. A simple example is:

PKG_GROUPS=	foogroup
PKG_USERS=	foouser:foogroup

A more complex example is that creates two groups and two users is:

PKG_GROUPS=	group1 group2:1005
PKG_USERS=	first:group1::First\\ User			\
		second:group2::Second\\ User:/home/second:${SH}

By default, a new user will have home directory /nonexistent, and login shell /sbin/nologin unless they are specified as part of the user element.

The package Makefile must also include ../../mk/bsd.pkg.install.mk prior to the inclusion of bsd.pkg.mk. This will cause the users and groups to be created at pre-install time, and the admin will be prompted to remove them at post-deinstall time. Automatic creation of the users and groups can be toggled on and off by setting the environment variable PKG_CREATE_USERGROUP prior to package installation.

11.23. How to handle compiler bugs

Some source files trigger bugs in the compiler, based on combinations of compiler version and architecture and almost always relation to optimisation being enabled. Common symptoms are gcc internal errors or never finishing compiling a file.

Typically a workaround involves testing the MACHINE_ARCH and compiler version, disabling optimisation for that file/MACHINE_ARCH/compiler combination, and documenting it in doc/HACKS. See doc/HACKS for examples.

11.24. Packages providing info files

Some packages install info files or use the “makeinfo” or “install-info” commands. Each info file:

  • is considered to be installed in the directory ${PREFIX}/${INFO_DIR},
  • is registered in the Info directory file ${PREFIX}/${INFO_DIR}/dir,
  • and must be listed as a filename in the INFO_FILES variable in the package Makefile.

INFO_DIR defaults to “info” and can be overridden in the package Makefile. INSTALL and DEINSTALL scripts will be generated for handling registration of the info files in the Info directory file. The command “install-info” used for the info files registration is either provided by the system, or by a special purpose package automatically added as dependency if needed.

A package which need the “makeinfo” command at build time must define the variable USE_MAKEINFO in its Makefile. If a minimum version of the “makeinfo” command is needed it should be noted with the TEXINFO_REQD variable in the package Makefile. By default, a minimum version of 3.12 is required. If the system does not provide a “makeinfo” command or if it does not match the required minimum, a build dependency on the devel/gtexinfo package is added automatically.

The installation process of the software provided by the package must not use “install-info”, as the registration of info files is the task of the package INSTALL sript, and it must use the right “makeinfo”.

If the package use buildlink2 framework no special action should be needed to achieve this goal.

If the package does not use the buildlink2 framework patch files are likely to be needed so the build and installation process of the software picks up the possibly dummy values of INSTALL_INFO and MAKEINFO variables.

Note

Temporarily, the variable USE_NEW_TEXINFO must be defined in the package Makefile. Previously, info files, “install-info” and “makeinfo” were handled somewhat differently and the two ways will coexist for a short period of time until all older packages are updated.

11.25. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading

If you need to download from a dynamic URL you can set DYNAMIC_MASTER_SITES and a make fetch will call files/getsite.sh with the name of each file to download as an argument, expecting it to output the URL of the directory from which to download it. graphics/ns-cult3d is an example of this usage.

If the download can't be automated, because the user must submit personal information to apply for a password, or must pay for the source, or whatever, you can set _FETCH_MESSAGE to a macro which displays a message explaining the situation. _FETCH_MESSAGE must be executable shell commands, not just a message. (Generally, it executes ${ECHO}). As of this writing, the following packages use this: audio/realplayer, cad/simian, devel/ipv6socket, emulators/vmare-module, fonts/acroread-jpnfont, sysutils/storage-manager, www/ap-aolserver, www/openacs. Try to be consistent with them.

11.26. Configuration files handling and placement

The global variable PKG_SYSCONFBASE (and some others) can be set by the system administrator in /etc/mk.conf to define the place where configuration files get installed. Therefore, packages must be adapted to support this feature. Keep in mind that you should only install files that are strictly necessary in the configuration directory, files that can go to $PREFIX/share should go there.

We will take a look at available variables first (bsd.pkg.mk contains more information). PKG_SYSCONFDIR is where the configuration files for a package may be found (that is, the full path, e.g. /etc or /usr/pkg/etc). This value may be customized in various ways:

  1. PKG_SYSCONFBASE is the main config directory under which all package configuration files are to be found. Users will typically want to set it to /etc, or accept the default location of $PREFIX/etc.

  2. PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR is the subdirectory of PKG_SYSCONFBASE under which the configuration files for a particular package may be found. Defaults to ${SYSCONFBASE}.

  3. PKG_SYSCONFVAR is the special suffix used to distinguish any overriding values for a particular package (see next item). It defaults to ${PKGBASE}, but for a collection of related packages that should all have the same PKG_SYSCONFDIR value, it can be set in each of the package Makefiles to a common value.

  4. PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR} overrides the value of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR} for packages with the same value for PKG_SYSCONFVAR.

    As an example, all the various KDE packages may want to set PKG_SYSCONFVAR to “kde” so admins can set PKG_SYSCONFDIR.kde in /etc/mk.conf to define where to install KDE config files.

Programs' configuration directory should be defined during the configure stage. Packages that use GNU autoconf can usually do this by using the “--sysconfdir” parameter, but this brings some problems as we will see now. When you change this pathname in packages, you should not allow them to install files in that directory directly. Instead they need to install those files under share/examples/${PKGNAME} so PLIST can register them.

Once you have the required configuration files in place (under the share/examples directory) the variable CONF_FILES should be set to copy them into PKG_SYSCONFDIR. The contents of this variable is formed by pairs of filenames; the first element of the pair specifies the file inside the examples directory (registered by PLIST) and the second element specifies the target file. This is done this way to allow binary packages to place files in the right directory using INSTALL/DEINSTALL scripts which are created automatically. The package Makefile must also include ../../mk/bsd.pkg.install.mk prior to the inclusion of bsd.pkg.mk to use these automatically generated scripts. The automatic copying of config files can be toggled by setting the environment variable PKG_CONFIG prior to package installation.

Here is an example, taken from mail/mutt/Makefile:

EGDIR=		${PREFIX}/share/doc/mutt/samples
CONF_FILES=	${EGDIR}/Muttrc ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}/Muttrc

As you can see, this package installs configuration files inside EGDIR, which are registered by PLIST. After that, the variable CONF_FILES lists the installed file first and then the target file. Users will also get an automatic message when files are installed using this method.

11.27. Packages providing login shells

If the purpose of the package is to provide a login shell, the variable PKG_SHELL should contain the full pathname of the shell executable installed by this package. The package Makefile also must include ../../mk/bsd.pkg.install.mk prior to the inclusion of bsd.pkg.mk to use the automatically generated INSTALL/DEINSTALL scripts.

An example taken from shells/zsh:

PKG_SHELL=	${PREFIX}/bin/zsh
.include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.install.mk"

The shell is registered into /etc/shells file automatically in the post-install target by the INSTALL script generated by bsd.pkg.install.mk and removed in the deinstall target by the DEINSTALL script.

11.28. Packages providing locale catalogues

If the package provides its own locale catalogues, the variable USE_PKGLOCALEDIR should be defined. It will ensure that the package's Makefile template files are fixed and point to the correct locale directories (which may vary, depending on OS), if necessary. See Section 6.1, “Miscellaneous” for details about PKGLOCALEDIR. This functionality is buildlink2-only.

11.29. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc

When installing packages as non-root user and using the just-in-time su(1) feature of pkgsrc, it can become annoying to type in the root password for each required package installed. To avoid this, the sudo package can be used, which does password caching over a limited time. To use it, install sudo (either as binary package or from security/sudo) and then put the following into your /etc/mk.conf:

SU_CMD=/usr/pkg/bin/sudo /bin/sh -c

11.30. Packages containing perl scripts

If your package contains interpreted perl scripts, set REPLACE_PERL to ensure that the proper interpreter path is set. REPLACE_PERL should contain a list of scripts, relative to WRKSRC, that you want adjusted.

11.31. Packages that cannot or should not be built

There are several reasons why a package might be instructed to not build under certain circumstances. If the package builds and runs on most platforms, the exceptions should be noted with NOT_FOR_PLATFORM. If the package builds and runs on a small handful of platforms, set ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM instead. If the package should be skipped (for example, because it provides functionality already provided by the system), set PKG_SKIP_REASON to a descriptive message. If the package should fail because some preconditions are not met, set PKG_FAIL_REASON to a descriptive message.

IGNORE is deprecated because it didn't provide enough information to determine whether the build should fail.

Chapter 12. Submitting and Committing

12.1. Submitting your packages

You have to separate between binary and “normal” (source) packages here:

  • precompiled binary packages

    Our policy is that we accept binaries only from NetBSD developers to guarantee that the packages don't contain any trojan horses etc. This is not to piss anyone off but rather to protect our users! You're still free to put up your home-made binary packages and tell the world where to get them.

  • packages

    First, check that your package is complete, compiles and runs well; see Chapter 10, Debugging and the rest of this document. Next, generate a gzipped tar-file of all the files needed for the package, preferably with all files in a single directory. Place this tar-file to a place where the package maintainers can fetch it using FTP or HTTP (WWW). Finally, send-pr with category “pkg”, a synopsis which includes the package name and version number, a short description of your package (contents of the COMMENT variable are OK) and the URL of your tar-file.

    You will be notified if your PR has been addressed so you can remove the tar-file.

    If you want to submit several packages, please send a separate PR for each one, it's easier for us to track things that way.

12.2. Committing: Importing a package into CVS

This section is only of interest for NetBSD developers with write access to the NetBSD pkgsrc repository. Please remember that cvs imports files relative to the cwd, and that the pathname that you give the cvs import command is so that it knows where to place the files in the repository. Newly created packages should be imported with a vendor tag of “TNF” and a release tag of “pkgsrc-base”, e.g:

% cd
.../pkgsrc/<category>/<pkgname>
% cvs import pkgsrc/<category>/<pkgname> TNF pkgsrc-base

Remember to move the directory from which you imported out of the way, or cvs will complain the next time you “cvs update” your source tree. Also don't forget to add the new package to the category's Makefile.

The commit message of the initial import should include part of the DESCR file, so people reading the mailing lists know what the package is/does.

Please note all package updates/additions in pkgsrc/doc/CHANGES. It's very important to keep this file up to date and conforming to the existing format, because it will be used by scripts to automatically update pages on www.NetBSD.org and other sites.

For new packages, “cvs import” is preferred to “cvs add” because the former gets everything with a single command, and provides a consistent tag.

12.3. Updating a Package to a Newer Version

Please always put a concise, appropriate and relevant summary of the changes between old and new versions into the commit log when updating a package. There are various reasons for this:

  • A URL is volatile, and can change over time. It may go away completely or its information may be overwritten by newer information.

  • Having the change information between old and new versions in our CVS repository is very useful for people who use either cvs or anoncvs.

  • Having the change information between old and new versions in our CVS repository is very useful for people who read the pkgsrc-changes mailing list, so that they can make tactical decisions about when to upgrade the package.

Please also recognise that, just because a new version of a package has been released, it should not automatically be upgraded in the CVS repository. We prefer to be conservative in the packages that are included in pkgsrc - development or beta packages are not really the best thing for most places in which pkgsrc is used. Please use your judgement about what should go into pkgsrc, and bear in mind that stability is to be preferred above new and possibly untested features.

12.4. Moving a Package in pkgsrc

  1. Make a copy of the directory somewhere else.
  2. Remove all CVS dirs.

    Alternatively to the first two steps you can also do:

    % cvs -d user@cvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot export -D today pkgsrc/category/package

    and use that for further work.

  3. Fix CATEGORIES and any DEPENDS paths that just did “../package” instead of “../../category/package”.
  4. cvs import the modified package in the new place.
  5. Check if any package depends on it:

    % cd /usr/pkgsrc
    % grep /package */*/Makefile* */*/buildlink*

  6. Fix paths in packages from step 5 to point to new location.
  7. cvs rm (-f) the package at the old location.
  8. Remove from oldcategory/Makefile.
  9. Add to newcategory/Makefile.
  10. Commit the changed and removed files:

    % cvs commit oldcategory/package oldcategory/Makefile newcategory/Makefile

    (and any packages from step 5, of course).

Appendix A. A simple example of a package: bison

Table of Contents

A.1. files
A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging

I checked to find a piece of software that wasn't in the packages collection, and picked GNU bison. Quite why someone would want to have bison when Berkeley yacc is already present in the tree is beyond me, but it's useful for the purposes of this exercise.

A.1. files

A.1.1. Makefile

# $NetBSD: pkgsrc.html,v 1.3 2003/06/23 13:27:57 grant Exp $
#

DISTNAME=	bison-1.25
CATEGORIES=	devel
MASTER_SITES=	${MASTER_SITE_GNU}

MAINTAINER=	thorpej@NetBSD.org
HOMEPAGE=	http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/bison.html
COMMENT=	GNU yacc clone
 
GNU_CONFIGURE=	yes
INFO_FILES=	bison.info
 
.include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk"

A.1.2. DESCR

GNU version of yacc.  Can make re-entrant parsers, and numerous other
improvements.  Why you would want this when Berkeley yacc(1) is part
of the NetBSD source tree is beyond me.

A.1.3. PLIST

@comment $NetBSD: pkgsrc.html,v 1.3 2003/06/23 13:27:57 grant Exp $
bin/bison
man/man1/bison.1.gz
info/bison.info
info/bison.info-1
info/bison.info-2
info/bison.info-3
info/bison.info-4
info/bison.info-5
share/bison.simple
share/bison.hairy

A.1.4. Checking a package with pkglint

The NetBSD package system comes with pkgtools/pkglint which helps to check the contents of these files. After installation it is quite easy to use, just change to the directory of the package you wish to examine and execute pkglint:

% pkglint
OK: checking ./DESCR.
OK: checking Makefile.
OK: checking distinfo.
OK: checking patches/patch-aa.
looks fine.

Depending on the supplied command line arguments (see pkglint(1)) more verbose checks will be performed. Use e.g. pkglint -v for a very verbose check.

A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging

Create the directory where the package lives, plus any auxiliary directories:

# cd /usr/pkgsrc/lang
# mkdir bison
# cd bison
# mkdir patches

Create Makefile, DESCR and PLIST (see Chapter 5, Package components - files, directories and contents) then continue with fetching the distfile:

# make fetch
>> bison-1.25.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist on this system.
>> Attempting to fetch from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu//.
Requesting ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
ftp: Error retrieving file: 500 Internal error
 
>> Attempting to fetch from ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/gnu//.
Requesting ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/gnu//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
ftp: Error retrieving file: 500 Internal error
 
>> Attempting to fetch from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles//.
Requesting ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
Successfully retrieved file.

Generate the checksum of the distfile into distinfo:

# make makesum

Now compile:

# make
>> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
===>  Extracting for bison-1.25
===>  Patching for bison-1.25
===>   Ignoring empty patch directory
===>  Configuring for bison-1.25
creating cache ./config.cache
checking for gcc... cc
checking whether we are using GNU C... yes
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin
checking how to run the C preprocessor... cc -E
checking for minix/config.h... no
checking for POSIXized ISC... no
checking whether cross-compiling... no
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for working const... yes
checking for working alloca.h... no
checking for alloca... yes
checking for strerror... yes
updating cache ./config.cache
creating ./config.status
creating Makefile
===>  Building for bison-1.25
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g LR0.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g allocate.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g closure.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g conflicts.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g derives.c
cc -c -DXPFILE=\"/usr/pkg/share/bison.simple\"  -DXPFILE1=\"/usr/pkg/share/bison.hairy\" -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1  -g  ./files.c 
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g getargs.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g gram.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g lalr.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g lex.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g main.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g nullable.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g output.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g print.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g reader.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g reduce.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g symtab.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g warshall.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g version.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g getopt.c
cc -c -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_MEMORY_H=1 -DHAVE_ALLOCA=1 -DHAVE_STRERROR=1 -I./../include  -g getopt1.c
cc  -g -o bison LR0.o allocate.o closure.o conflicts.o derives.o files.o         getargs.o gram.o lalr.o lex.o                                   main.o nullable.o output.o print.o reader.o reduce.o symtab.o   warshall.o version.o getopt.o getopt1.o
./files.c:240: warning: mktemp() possibly used unsafely, consider using mkstemp()
rm -f bison.s1
sed -e "/^#line/ s|bison|/usr/pkg/share/bison|" < ./bison.simple > bison.s1

Everything seems OK, so install the files:

# make install
>> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
===>  Installing for bison-1.25
sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/pkg/bin /usr/pkg/share  /usr/pkg/info /usr/pkg/man/man1
rm -f /usr/pkg/bin/bison
cd /usr/pkg/share; rm -f bison.simple bison.hairy
rm -f /usr/pkg/man/man1/bison.1 /usr/pkg/info/bison.info*
install -c  -o bin -g bin -m 555 bison /usr/pkg/bin/bison
/usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 bison.s1 /usr/pkg/share/bison.simple
/usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 ./bison.hairy /usr/pkg/share/bison.hairy
cd .; for f in bison.info*;  do /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 $f /usr/pkg/info/$f; done
/usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 ./bison.1 /usr/pkg/man/man1/bison.1
===>  Registering installation for bison-1.25

You can now use bison, and also - if you decide so - remove it with pkg_delete bison. Should you decide that you want a binary package, do this now:

# make package
>> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
===>  Building package for bison-1.25
Creating package bison-1.25.tgz
Registering depends:.
Creating gzip'd tar ball in '/u/pkgsrc/lang/bison/bison-1.25.tgz'

Now that you don't need the source and object files any more, clean up:

# make clean
===>  Cleaning for bison-1.25

Appendix B. Build logs

Table of Contents

B.1. Building top
B.2. Packaging top

B.1. Building top

# make
>> top-3.5beta5.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist on this system.
>> Attempting to fetch from ftp://ftp.groupsys.com/pub/top/.
Requesting ftp://ftp.groupsys.com/pub/top/top-3.5beta5.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
Successfully retrieved file.
>> Checksum OK for top-3.5beta5.tar.gz.
===>  Extracting for top-3.5beta5
===>  Patching for top-3.5beta5
===>  Applying NetBSD patches for top-3.5beta5
===>  Configuring for top-3.5beta5
/bin/cp /u/pkgsrc/sysutils/top/files/defaults /u/pkgsrc/sysutils/top/work/top-3.5beta5/.defaults
chmod a-x /u/pkgsrc/sysutils/top/work/top-3.5beta5/install

Reading configuration from last time...

Using these settings:
        Bourne Shell   /bin/sh
          C compiler   cc
    Compiler options   -DHAVE_GETOPT -O
         Awk command   awk
     Install command   /usr/bin/install

              Module   netbsd13
             LoadMax   5.0
        Default TOPN   -1
        Nominal TOPN   18
       Default Delay   2
Random passwd access   yes
          Table Size   47
               Owner   root
         Group Owner   kmem
                Mode   2755
       bin directory   $(PREFIX)/bin
       man directory   $(PREFIX)/man/man1
       man extension   1
       man style       man

Building Makefile...
Building top.local.h...
Building top.1...
Doing a "make clean".
rm -f *.o top core core.* sigdesc.h
To create the executable, type "make".
To install the executable, type "make install".
===>  Building for top-3.5beta5
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c top.c
awk -f sigconv.awk /usr/include/sys/signal.h >sigdesc.h
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c commands.c
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c display.c
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c screen.c
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c username.c
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c utils.c
utils.c: In function `errmsg':
utils.c:348: warning: return discards `const' from pointer target type
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c version.c
cc -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O  -c getopt.c
cc "-DOSREV=12G" -DHAVE_GETOPT -DORDER -DHAVE_GETOPT -O -c machine.c
rm -f top
cc -o top top.o commands.o display.o screen.o username.o  utils.o version.o getopt.o machine.o -ltermcap -lm -lkvm
#
# make install
>> Checksum OK for top-3.5beta5.tar.gz.
===>  Installing for top-3.5beta5
/usr/bin/install -o root -m 2755 -g kmem top /usr/pkg/bin
/usr/bin/install top.1 /usr/pkg/man/man1/top.1
strip /usr/pkg/bin/top
===>  Registering installation for top-3.5beta5

B.2. Packaging top

# make package
>> Checksum OK for top-3.5beta5.tar.gz.
===>  Building package for top-3.5beta5
Creating package top-3.5beta5.tgz
Registering depends:.
Creating gzip'd tar ball in '/u/pkgsrc/sysutils/top/top-3.5beta5.tgz'

Appendix C. Layout of the FTP server's package archive

Layout for precompiled binary packages on ftp.NetBSD.org:

/pub/NetBSD/packages/
                README
                distfiles/
		pkgsrc -> /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/pkgsrc
                1.6/
                        i386/
                                All/
                                archivers/
                                        foo -> ../All/foo
                                ...
                        m68k/
                                All/
                                archivers/
                                        foo -> ../All/foo
                                ...
                        amiga -> m68k
                        atari -> m68k
                        ...