VCS package guidelines
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Version control systems can be used for retrieval of source code for both usual statically versioned packages and latest (trunk) version of a development branch. This article covers both cases.
Contents
Prototypes
The abs package for the Arch Build System provides prototypes for CVS, SVN, Git, Mercurial, and Darcs PKGBUILDs. When abs is installed, you can find them in /usr/share/pacman
. Latest versions can be found in the prototypes directory in the ABS Git repository.
Guidelines
- Suffix
pkgname
with-cvs
,-svn
,-hg
,-darcs
,-bzr
,-git
etc. unless the package fetches a specific release.
- If the resulting package is different after changing the dependencies, URL, sources, etc. increasing the
pkgrel
is mandatory. Touching thepkgver
is not.
-
--holdver
can be used to prevent makepkg from updating thepkgver
(see: makepkg(8))
- Include what the package conflicts with and provides (e.g. for fluxbox-git:
conflicts=('fluxbox')
andprovides=('fluxbox')
).
-
replaces=()
generally causes unnecessary problems and should be avoided.
- When using the cvsroot, use
anonymous:@
rather thananonymous@
to avoid having to enter a blank password oranonymous:password@
, if one is required.
- Include the appropriate VCS tool in
makedepends=()
(cvs, subversion, git, ...).
- Because the sources are not static, skip the checksum in
md5sums=()
by adding'SKIP'
.
VCS sources
Starting with pacman 4.1, the VCS sources should be specified in the source=()
array and will be treated like any other source. makepkg
will clone/checkout/branch the repository into $SRCDEST
(same as $startdir
if not set in makepkg.conf(5)) and copy it to $srcdir
(in a specific way to each VCS). The local repository is left untouched, thus invalidating the need for a -build
directory.
The general format of a VCS source=()
array is:
source=('[folder::][vcs+]url[#fragment]')
-
folder
(optional) is used to change the default repository name to something more relevant (e.g. thantrunk
) or to preserve the previous sources. -
vcs+
is needed for URLs that do not reflect the VCS type, e.g.git+http://some_repo
. -
url
is the URL to the distant or local repository. -
#fragment
(optional) is needed to pull a specific branch or commit. Seeman PKGBUILD
for more information on the fragments available for each VCS.
An example Git source array:
source=('project_name::git+http://project_url#branch=project_branch')
The pkgver() function
The pkgver
autobump is now achieved via a dedicated pkgver()
function. This allows for better control over the pkgver
, and maintainers should favor a pkgver
that makes sense.
To use pkgver()
, you still need to declare the pkgver
variable with the most recent value. makepkg will invoke function pkgver()
, and update variable pkgver
accordingly.
It is recommended to have following version format: RELEASE.rREVISION where REVISION is a monotonically increasing number that uniquely identifies the source tree (VCS revisions do this). If there are no public releases and no repository tags then zero could be used as a release number or you can drop RELEASE completely and use version number that looks like rREVISION. If there are public releases but repo has no tags then the developer should get the release version somehow e.g. by parsing the project files.
The revision number delimiter ("r" right before REVISION) is important. This delimiter allows to avoid problems in case if upstream decides to make its first release or uses versions with different number of components. E.g. if at revision "455" upstream decides to release version 0.1 then the revision delimiter preserves version monotonicity - 0.1.r456 > r454
. Without the delimiter monotonicity fails - 0.1.456 < 454
.
Following are some examples showing the intended output:
Git
Use the most recent tag reachable from the last commit. If there are no tags then use number of revisions since beginning of the history.
pkgver() { cd "$srcdir/$pkgname" ( set -o pipefail git describe --long --tags 2>/dev/null | sed 's/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g' || printf "r%s.%s" "$(git rev-list --count HEAD)" "$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" ) }
0.9.9.r27.g2b039da # or, if no tags, r1581.2b039da
If tag contains a prefix, like v
or project name then it should be cut off:
# cutting off 'FOO-' prefix in the git tag git describe --long | sed 's/^FOO-//;s/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g'
6.1.r3.gd77e105
Subversion
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" local ver="$(svnversion)" printf "r%s" "${ver//[[:alpha:]]}" }
r8546
Mercurial
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" printf "r%s.%s" "$(hg identify -n)" "$(hg identify -i)" }
r2813.75881cc5391e
Bazaar
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" printf "r%s" "$(bzr revno)" }
r830
Fallback
In case no satisfactory pkgver
can be extracted from the repository, the current date can be used:
pkgver() { date +%Y%m%d }
20130408
Although it does not identify source tree state uniquely, so avoid it if possible.
Tips
Git Submodules
Git submodules are a little tricky to do. The idea is to add the URLs of the submodules themselves directly to the sources array and then reference them during prepare(). This could look like this:
source=("git://somewhere.org/something/something.git" "git://somewhere.org/mysubmodule/mysubmodule.git") prepare() { cd something git submodule init git config submodule.mysubmodule.url $srcdir/mysubmodule git submodule update }