PKGBUILD
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An explanation of PKGBUILD variables used for Building Packages. |
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VCS PKGBUILD guidelines |
PKGBUILD Tricks |
A PKGBUILD is an Arch Linux package build description file used for Building Packages. This article describes possible PKGBUILD variables.
Building packages
Packages in Arch Linux are built using the makepkg utility and information stored in a PKGBUILD file. When makepkg is run, it searches for a PKGBUILD in the current directory and follows the instructions therein to either compile or otherwise acquire the required files to be packaged within a package file (pkgname.pkg.tar.gz). The resulting package contains binary files and installation instructions; readily installed with pacman.
See Building Packages for more information.
Variables
The following are variables that can be filled out in the PKGBUILD file:
- pkgname
- The name of the package. It should consist of alphanumeric characters only and all letters should be lowercase. For the sake of consistency, pkgname should match the name of the source tarball of the software you are packaging. For instance, if the software is in foobar-2.5.tar.gz, the pkgname value should be foobar. The present working directory the PKGBUILD file is in should also match the pkgname.
- pkgver
- The version of the package. The value should be the same as the version released by the author of the package. It can contain letters, numbers and periods but CANNOT contain a hyphen. If the author of the package uses a hyphen in their version numbering scheme, replace it with an underscore. For instance, if the version is 0.99-10, it should be changed to 0.99_10.
- pkgrel
- The release number of the package specific to Arch Linux. This value allows users to differentiate between consecutive builds of the same version of a package. When a new package version is first released, the release number starts at 1. As fixes and optimizations are made to the PKGBUILD file, the package will be re-released and the release number will increment by 1. When a new version of the package comes out, the release number resets to 1.
- pkgdesc
- The description of the package. The description should be about 80 characters or less and should not include the package name in a self-referencing way. For instance, "Nedit is a text editor for X11" should be written as "A text editor for X11."
- arch
- An array of architectures that the PKGBUILD file is known to build and work on. Currently, it should contain i686 and/or x86_64, arch=('i686' 'x86_64'). The value any can also be used for architechture-independent packages. You can access this value with the variable $CARCH during the build.
- url
- The URL of the official site of the software being packaged.
- license
- The license under which the software is distributed. A licenses package has been created in [core] that stores common licenses in /usr/share/licenses/common, i.e. /usr/share/licenses/common/GPL. If a package is licensed under one of these licenses, the value should be set to the directory name, e.g. license=('GPL'). If the appropriate license is not included in the official licenses package, several things must be done:
- The license file(s) should be included in: /usr/share/licenses/pkgname/, e.g. /usr/share/licenses/foobar/LICENSE.
- If the source tarball does NOT contain the license details and the license is only displayed elsewhere, e.g. a website, then you need to copy the license to a file and include it.
- Add custom to the license array. Optionally, you can replace custom with custom:name of license. Once a license is used in two or more packages in an official repository (including [community]), it becomes a part of the licenses package.
- The BSD, MIT, zlib/png and Python licenses are special cases and could not be included in the licenses package. For the sake of the license array, it is treated as a common license (license=('BSD'), license=('MIT'), license=('ZLIB') and license=('Python')) but technically each one is a custom license because each one has its own copyright line. Any packages licensed under these four should have its own unique license stored in /usr/share/licenses/pkgname. Some packages may not be covered by a single license. In these cases, multiple entries may be made in the license array, e.g. license=('GPL' 'custom:name of license').
- Additionally, the (L)GPL has many versions and permutations of those versions. For (L)GPL software, the convention is:
- (L)GPL - (L)GPLv2 or any later version
- (L)GPL2 - (L)GPL2 only
- (L)GPL3 - (L)GPL3 or any later version
- groups
- The group the package belongs in. For instance, when you install the kdebase package, it installs all packages that belong in the kde group.
- depends
- An array of package names that must be installed before this software can be run. If a software requires a minimum version of a dependency, the >= operator should be used to point this out, e.g. depends=('foobar>=1.8.0'). You do not need to list packages that your software depends on if other packages your software depends on already have those packages listed in their dependency. For instance, gtk2 depends on glib2 and glibc. However, glibc does not need to be listed as a dependency for gtk2 because it is a dependency for glib2.
- makedepends
- An array of package names that must be installed to build the software but unnecessary for using the software after installation. You can specify the minimum version dependency of the packages in the same format as the depends array.
- optdepends
- An array of package names that are not needed for the software to function but provides additional features. A short description of what each package provides should also be noted. An optdepends may look like this:
optdepends=('cups: printing support' 'sane: scanners support' 'libgphoto2: digital cameras support' 'alsa-lib: sound support' 'giflib: GIF images support' 'libjpeg: JPEG images support' 'libpng: PNG images support')
- provides
- An array of package names that this package provides the features of (or a virtual package such as cron or sh). If you use this variable, you should add the version (pkgver and perhaps the pkgrel) that this package will provide if dependencies may be affected by it. For instance, if you are providing a modified qt package named qt-foobar version 3.3.8 which provides qt then the provides array should look like provides=('qt=3.3.8'). Putting provides=('qt') will cause to fail those dependencies that require a specific version of qt. Do not add pkgname to your provides array, this is done automatically.
- conflicts
- An array of package names that may cause problems with this package if installed. You can also specify the version properties of the conflicting packages in the same format as the depends array.
- replaces
- An array of obsolete package name that are replaced by this package, e.g. replaces=('ethereal') for the wireshark package. After syncing with pacman -Sy, it will immediately replace an installed package upon encountering another package with the matching replaces in the repositories. If you are providing an alternate version of an already existing package, use the conflicts variable which is only evaluated when actually installing the conflicting package.
- backup
- An array of files to be backed up as file.pacsave when the package is removed. This is commonly used for packages placing configuration files in /etc. The file paths in this array should be relative paths (e.g. etc/pacman.conf) not absolute paths (e.g. /etc/pacman.conf).
- options
- This array allows you to override some of the default behavior of makepkg. To set an option, include the option name in the array. To reverse the default behavior, place an ! at the front of the option. The following options may be placed in the array:
- strip - Strips symbols from binaries and libraries.
- docs - Save /doc directories.
- libtool - Leave libtool (.la) files in packages.
- emptydirs - Leave empty directories in packages.
- zipman - Compress man and info pages with gzip.
- ccache - Allow the use of ccache during build. More useful in its negative form !ccache with select packages that have problems building with ccache.
- distcc - Allow the use of distcc during build. More useful in its negative form !distcc with select packages that have problems building with distcc.
- makeflags - Allow the use of user-specific makeflags during build. More useful in its negative form !makeflags with select packages that have problems building with custom makeflags.
- force - Force the package to be upgraded by a pacman system upgrade operation, even if the version number would normally not trigger such an upgrade. This is useful when the version numbering scheme of a package changes (or is alphanumeric).
- install
- The name of the .install script to be included in the package. pacman has the ability to store and execute a package-specific script when it installs, removes or upgrades a package. The script contains the following functions which run at different times:
- pre_install - The script is run right before files are extracted. One argument is passed: new package version.
- post_install - The script is run right after files are extracted. One argument is passed: new package version.
- pre_upgrade - The script is run right before files are extracted. Two arguments are passed in the following order: new package version, old package version.
- post_upgrade - The script is run after files are extracted. Two arguments are passed in the following order: new package version, old package version.
- pre_remove - The script is run right before files are removed. One argument is passed: old package version.
- post_remove - The script is run right after files are removed. One argument is passed: old package version.
- source
- An array of files which are needed to build the package. It must contain the location of the software source, which in most cases is a full HTTP or FTP URL. The previously set variables pkgname and pkgver can be used effectively here (e.g. source=(http://example.com/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz))
- noextract
- An array of files listed under the source array which should not be extracted from their archive format by makepkg. This most commonly applies to certain zip files which cannot be handled by bsdtar because libarchive processes all files as streams rather than random access as unzip does. In these situations unzip should be added in the makedepends array and the first line of the build() function should contain:
cd $srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver unzip [source].zip
- md5sums
- An array of MD5 checksums of the files listed in the source array. Once all files in the source array are available, an MD5 hash of each file will be automatically generated and compared with the values of this array in the same order they appear in the source array. While the order of the source files itself does not matter, it is important that it matches the order of this array since makepkg cannot guess which checksum belongs to what source file. You can generate this array quickly and easily using the command makepkg -g in the directory that contains the PKGBUILD file.
It is common practice to preserve the order of the PKGBUILD variables as shown above. However, this is not mandatory, as the only requirement in this context is correct Bash syntax.