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.
Prototypes
Use only the PKGBUILD prototypes provided in the pacman package (PKGBUILD-split.proto
, PKGBUILD-vcs.proto
and PKGBUILD.proto
in /usr/share/pacman
).
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-gitAUR:
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
bzr
, git
, hg
and svn
. See the fragment
section of PKGBUILD(5) § USING VCS SOURCES for a list of supported VCS.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. See PKGBUILD(5) § USING VCS SOURCES for more information on the fragments available for each VCS.
An example Git source array:
source=('project_name::git+https://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 repository 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
.
See PKGBUILD-vcs.proto for generic examples showing the intended output.
Git
Using the most recent annotated tag reachable from the last commit:
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" git describe --long | sed 's/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g' }
2.0.r6.ga17a017
Using the most recent un-annotated tag reachable from the last commit:
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" git describe --long --tags | sed 's/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g' }
0.71.r115.gd95ee07
In case if the git tag does not contain dashes then one can use simpler sed expression sed 's/-/.r/;s/-/./'
.
If tag contains a prefix, like v
or project name then it should be cut off:
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" # cutting off 'foo-' prefix that presents in the git tag git describe --long | sed 's/^foo-//;s/\([^-]*-g\)/r\1/;s/-/./g' }
6.1.r3.gd77e105
If there are no tags then use number of revisions since beginning of the history:
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" printf "r%s.%s" "$(git rev-list --count HEAD)" "$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" }
r1142.a17a017
Version and only commit/revision number (SHA1 omitted; however, without a SHA1 quick referencing of an exact revision is lost if not mindful of versioning):
git describe --long | sed -r 's/-([0-9,a-g,A-G]{7}.*)//' | sed 's/-/./g'
Both methods can also be combined, to support repositories that start without a tag but get tagged later on (uses a bashism):
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" ( set -o pipefail git describe --long 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 # if tags exist r1581.2b039da # else fallback
Subversion
pkgver() { cd "$pkgname" local ver="$(svnversion)" printf "r%s" "${ver//[[:alpha:]]}" }
r8546
0.
.Mercurial
pkgver() { cd "$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 and tricks
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+https://somewhere.org/something/something.git" "git+https://somewhere.org/mysubmodule/mysubmodule.git") prepare() { cd something git submodule init git config submodule.mysubmodule.url "$srcdir/mysubmodule" git submodule update }