3 Documentation on the NetBSD packages system
15 Copyright 1994-2007 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc
17 $NetBSD: pkgsrc.xml,v 1.26 2007/09/18 08:17:21 rillig Exp $
21 pkgsrc is a centralized package management system for Unix-like operating
22 systems. This guide provides information for users and developers of pkgsrc. It
23 covers installation of binary and source packages, creation of binary and
24 source packages and a high-level overview about the infrastructure.
26 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
35 1.1.2. Supported platforms
40 1.3.1. Roles involved in pkgsrc
44 I. The pkgsrc user's guide
46 2. Where to get pkgsrc and how to keep it up-to-date
48 2.1. Getting pkgsrc for the first time
51 2.1.2. Via anonymous CVS
53 2.2. Keeping pkgsrc up-to-date
58 3. Using pkgsrc on systems other than NetBSD
60 3.1. Binary distribution
61 3.2. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
62 3.3. Platform-specific notes
64 3.3.1. Darwin (Mac OS X)
74 4.1. Using binary packages
76 4.1.1. Finding binary packages
77 4.1.2. Installing binary packages
78 4.1.3. Deinstalling packages
79 4.1.4. Getting information about installed packages
80 4.1.5. Checking for security vulnerabilities in installed packages
81 4.1.6. Finding if newer versions of your installed packages are in
83 4.1.7. Other administrative functions
84 4.1.8. A word of warning
86 4.2. Building packages from source
89 4.2.2. Fetching distfiles
90 4.2.3. How to build and install
94 5.1. General configuration
95 5.2. Variables affecting the build process
96 5.3. Variables affecting the installation process
97 5.4. Selecting and configuring the compiler
99 5.4.1. Selecting the compiler
100 5.4.2. Additional flags to the compiler (CFLAGS)
101 5.4.3. Additional flags to the linker (LDFLAGS)
103 5.5. Developer/advanced settings
104 5.6. Selecting Build Options
106 6. Creating binary packages
108 6.1. Building a single binary package
109 6.2. Settings for creation of binary packages
111 7. Creating binary packages for everything in pkgsrc (bulk builds)
113 7.1. Think first, build later
114 7.2. Requirements of a bulk build
115 7.3. Running an old-style bulk build
118 7.3.2. Other environmental considerations
121 7.3.5. Disk space requirements
122 7.3.6. Setting up a sandbox for chrooted builds
123 7.3.7. Building a partial set of packages
124 7.3.8. Uploading results of a bulk build
126 7.4. Running a pbulk-style bulk build
131 7.5. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection
133 7.5.1. Example of cdpack
135 8. Directory layout of the installed files
137 8.1. File system layout in ${LOCALBASE}
138 8.2. File system layout in ${VARBASE}
140 9. Frequently Asked Questions
142 9.1. Are there any mailing lists for pkg-related discussion?
143 9.2. Where's the pkgviews documentation?
144 9.3. Utilities for package management (pkgtools)
145 9.4. How to use pkgsrc as non-root
146 9.5. How to resume transfers when fetching distfiles?
147 9.6. How can I install/use modular X.org from pkgsrc?
148 9.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
149 9.8. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
150 9.9. How to fetch all distfiles at once
151 9.10. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc"
153 9.11. What does "Could not find bsd.own.mk" mean?
154 9.12. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
155 9.13. How do I change the location of configuration files?
156 9.14. Automated security checks
157 9.15. Why do some packages ignore my CFLAGS?
158 9.16. A package does not build. What shall I do?
159 9.17. What does "Makefile appears to contain unresolved cvs/rcs/???
160 merge conflicts" mean?
162 II. The pkgsrc developer's guide
164 10. Creating a new pkgsrc package from scratch
166 10.1. Common types of packages
169 10.1.2. KDE applications
170 10.1.3. Python modules and programs
174 10.2.1. How the www/nvu package came into pkgsrc
176 11. Package components - files, directories and contents
182 11.3.1. Structure of a single patch file
183 11.3.2. Creating patch files
184 11.3.3. Sources where the patch files come from
185 11.3.4. Patching guidelines
186 11.3.5. Feedback to the author
188 11.4. Other mandatory files
191 11.5.1. Files affecting the binary package
192 11.5.2. Files affecting the build process
193 11.5.3. Files affecting nothing at all
198 12. Programming in Makefiles
201 12.2. Makefile variables
203 12.2.1. Naming conventions
207 12.3.1. Adding things to a list
208 12.3.2. Converting an internal list into an external list
209 12.3.3. Passing variables to a shell command
210 12.3.4. Quoting guideline
211 12.3.5. Workaround for a bug in BSD Make
216 13.2. Semi-automatic PLIST generation
217 13.3. Tweaking output of make print-PLIST
218 13.4. Variable substitution in PLIST
219 13.5. Man page compression
220 13.6. Changing PLIST source with PLIST_SRC
221 13.7. Platform-specific and differing PLISTs
222 13.8. Sharing directories between packages
224 14. Buildlink methodology
226 14.1. Converting packages to use buildlink3
227 14.2. Writing buildlink3.mk files
229 14.2.1. Anatomy of a buildlink3.mk file
230 14.2.2. Updating BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg and
231 BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg in buildlink3.mk files
233 14.3. Writing builtin.mk files
235 14.3.1. Anatomy of a builtin.mk file
236 14.3.2. Global preferences for native or pkgsrc software
238 15. The pkginstall framework
240 15.1. Files and directories outside the installation prefix
242 15.1.1. Directory manipulation
243 15.1.2. File manipulation
245 15.2. Configuration files
247 15.2.1. How PKG_SYSCONFDIR is set
248 15.2.2. Telling the software where configuration files are
249 15.2.3. Patching installations
250 15.2.4. Disabling handling of configuration files
252 15.3. System startup scripts
254 15.3.1. Disabling handling of system startup scripts
256 15.4. System users and groups
259 15.5.1. Disabling shell registration
263 15.6.1. Disabling automatic update of the fonts databases
267 16.1. Global default options
268 16.2. Converting packages to use bsd.options.mk
270 16.4. Determining the options of dependencies
272 17. The build process
275 17.2. Program location
276 17.3. Directories used during the build process
277 17.4. Running a phase
278 17.5. The fetch phase
280 17.5.1. What to fetch and where to get it from
281 17.5.2. How are the files fetched?
283 17.6. The checksum phase
284 17.7. The extract phase
285 17.8. The patch phase
286 17.9. The tools phase
287 17.10. The wrapper phase
288 17.11. The configure phase
289 17.12. The build phase
290 17.13. The test phase
291 17.14. The install phase
292 17.15. The package phase
294 17.17. Other helpful targets
296 18. Tools needed for building or running
298 18.1. Tools for pkgsrc builds
299 18.2. Tools needed by packages
300 18.3. Tools provided by platforms
301 18.4. Questions regarding the tools
303 19. Making your package work
305 19.1. General operation
307 19.1.1. Portability of packages
308 19.1.2. How to pull in user-settable variables from mk.conf
309 19.1.3. User interaction
310 19.1.4. Handling licenses
311 19.1.5. Restricted packages
312 19.1.6. Handling dependencies
313 19.1.7. Handling conflicts with other packages
314 19.1.8. Packages that cannot or should not be built
315 19.1.9. Packages which should not be deleted, once installed
316 19.1.10. Handling packages with security problems
317 19.1.11. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an
319 19.1.12. Substituting variable text in the package files (the SUBST
322 19.2. Fixing problems in the fetch phase
324 19.2.1. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain
326 19.2.2. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
328 19.3. Fixing problems in the configure phase
330 19.3.1. Shared libraries - libtool
331 19.3.2. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
332 19.3.3. GNU Autoconf/Automake
334 19.4. Programming languages
336 19.4.1. C, C++, and Fortran
338 19.4.3. Packages containing perl scripts
339 19.4.4. Other programming languages
341 19.5. Fixing problems in the build phase
343 19.5.1. Compiling C and C++ code conditionally
344 19.5.2. How to handle compiler bugs
345 19.5.3. Undefined reference to "..."
346 19.5.4. Running out of memory
348 19.6. Fixing problems in the install phase
350 19.6.1. Creating needed directories
351 19.6.2. Where to install documentation
352 19.6.3. Installing highscore files
353 19.6.4. Adding DESTDIR support to packages
354 19.6.5. Packages with hardcoded paths to other interpreters
355 19.6.6. Packages installing perl modules
356 19.6.7. Packages installing info files
357 19.6.8. Packages installing man pages
358 19.6.9. Packages installing GConf data files
359 19.6.10. Packages installing scrollkeeper/rarian data files
360 19.6.11. Packages installing X11 fonts
361 19.6.12. Packages installing GTK2 modules
362 19.6.13. Packages installing SGML or XML data
363 19.6.14. Packages installing extensions to the MIME database
364 19.6.15. Packages using intltool
365 19.6.16. Packages installing startup scripts
366 19.6.17. Packages installing TeX modules
367 19.6.18. Packages supporting running binaries in emulation
368 19.6.19. Packages installing hicolor theme icons
369 19.6.20. Packages installing desktop files
371 19.7. Marking packages as having problems
374 21. Submitting and Committing
376 21.1. Submitting binary packages
377 21.2. Submitting source packages (for non-NetBSD-developers)
378 21.3. General notes when adding, updating, or removing packages
379 21.4. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
380 21.5. Updating a package to a newer version
381 21.6. Renaming a package in pkgsrc
382 21.7. Moving a package in pkgsrc
384 22. Frequently Asked Questions
385 23. GNOME packaging and porting
388 23.2. Packaging a GNOME application
389 23.3. Updating GNOME to a newer version
390 23.4. Patching guidelines
392 III. The pkgsrc infrastructure internals
394 24. Design of the pkgsrc infrastructure
396 24.1. The meaning of variable definitions
397 24.2. Avoiding problems before they arise
398 24.3. Variable evaluation
403 24.4. How can variables be specified?
404 24.5. Designing interfaces for Makefile fragments
406 24.5.1. Procedures with parameters
407 24.5.2. Actions taken on behalf of parameters
409 24.6. The order in which files are loaded
411 24.6.1. The order in bsd.prefs.mk
412 24.6.2. The order in bsd.pkg.mk
416 25.1. The regression tests framework
417 25.2. Running the regression tests
418 25.3. Adding a new regression test
420 25.3.1. Overridable functions
421 25.3.2. Helper functions
425 26.1. Porting pkgsrc to a new operating system
426 26.2. Adding support for a new compiler
428 A. A simple example package: bison
435 A.1.4. Checking a package with pkglint
437 A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging
442 B.2. Packaging figlet
444 C. Directory layout of the pkgsrc FTP server
446 C.1. distfiles: The distributed source files
447 C.2. misc: Miscellaneous things
448 C.3. packages: Binary packages
449 C.4. reports: Bulk build reports
450 C.5. current, pkgsrc-20xxQy: source packages
452 D. Editing guidelines for the pkgsrc guide
459 1.1. Platforms supported by pkgsrc
460 11.1. Patching examples
461 23.1. PLIST handling for GNOME packages
463 Chapter 1. What is pkgsrc?
470 1.1.2. Supported platforms
475 1.3.1. Roles involved in pkgsrc
481 There is a lot of software freely available for Unix-based systems, which is
482 usually available in form of the source code. Before such software can be used,
483 it needs to be configured to the local system, compiled and installed, and this
484 is exactly what The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc) does. pkgsrc also has
485 some basic commands to handle binary packages, so that not every user has to
486 build the packages for himself, which is a time-costly task.
488 pkgsrc currently contains several thousand packages, including:
490 * www/apache - The Apache web server
492 * www/firefox - The Firefox web browser
494 * meta-pkgs/gnome - The GNOME Desktop Environment
496 * meta-pkgs/kde3 - The K Desktop Environment
498 ...just to name a few.
500 pkgsrc has built-in support for handling varying dependencies, such as pthreads
501 and X11, and extended features such as IPv6 support on a range of platforms.
505 pkgsrc provides the following key features:
507 * Easy building of software from source as well as the creation and
508 installation of binary packages. The source and latest patches are
509 retrieved from a master or mirror download site, checksum verified, then
510 built on your system. Support for binary-only distributions is available
511 for both native platforms and NetBSD emulated platforms.
513 * All packages are installed in a consistent directory tree, including
514 binaries, libraries, man pages and other documentation.
516 * Package dependencies, including when performing package updates, are
517 handled automatically. The configuration files of various packages are
518 handled automatically during updates, so local changes are preserved.
520 * Like NetBSD, pkgsrc is designed with portability in mind and consists of
521 highly portable code. This allows the greatest speed of development when
522 porting to a new platform. This portability also ensures that pkgsrc is
523 consistent across all platforms.
525 * The installation prefix, acceptable software licenses, international
526 encryption requirements and build-time options for a large number of
527 packages are all set in a simple, central configuration file.
529 * The entire source (not including the distribution files) is freely
530 available under a BSD license, so you may extend and adapt pkgsrc to your
531 needs. Support for local packages and patches is available right out of the
532 box, so you can configure it specifically for your environment.
534 The following principles are basic to pkgsrc:
536 * "It should only work if it's right." ? That means, if a package contains
537 bugs, it's better to find them and to complain about them rather than to
538 just install the package and hope that it works. There are numerous checks
539 in pkgsrc that try to find such bugs: Static analysis tools (pkgtools/
540 pkglint), build-time checks (portability of shell scripts), and
541 post-installation checks (installed files, references to shared libraries,
542 script interpreters).
544 * "If it works, it should work everywhere" ? Like NetBSD has been ported to
545 many hardware architectures, pkgsrc has been ported to many operating
546 systems. Care is taken that packages behave the same on all platforms.
548 1.1.2. Supported platforms
550 pkgsrc consists of both a source distribution and a binary distribution for
551 these operating systems. After retrieving the required source or binaries, you
552 can be up and running with pkgsrc in just minutes!
554 pkgsrc was derived from FreeBSD's ports system, and initially developed for
555 NetBSD only. Since then, pkgsrc has grown a lot, and now supports the following
558 Table 1.1. Platforms supported by pkgsrc
560 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
561 | Platform |Date Support Added|
562 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
564 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
565 |Solaris | Mar 1999 |
566 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
568 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
569 |Darwin (Mac OS X) | Oct 2001 |
570 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
571 |FreeBSD | Nov 2002 |
572 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
573 |OpenBSD | Nov 2002 |
574 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
576 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
578 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
580 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
581 |Interix (Microsoft Windows Services for Unix)| Mar 2004 |
582 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
583 |DragonFlyBSD | Oct 2004 |
584 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
586 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
588 |---------------------------------------------+------------------|
590 +----------------------------------------------------------------+
595 This document is divided into three parts. The first, The pkgsrc user's guide,
596 describes how one can use one of the packages in the Package Collection, either
597 by installing a precompiled binary package, or by building one's own copy using
598 the NetBSD package system. The second part, The pkgsrc developer's guide,
599 explains how to prepare a package so it can be easily built by other NetBSD
600 users without knowing about the package's building details. The third part, The
601 pkgsrc infrastructure internals is intended for those who want to understand
602 how pkgsrc is implemented.
604 This document is available in various formats: HTML, PDF, PS, TXT.
608 There has been a lot of talk about "ports", "packages", etc. so far. Here is a
609 description of all the terminology used within this document.
613 A set of files and building instructions that describe what's necessary to
614 build a certain piece of software using pkgsrc. Packages are traditionally
615 stored under /usr/pkgsrc.
617 The NetBSD package system
619 This is the former name of "pkgsrc". It is part of the NetBSD operating
620 system and can be bootstrapped to run on non-NetBSD operating systems as
621 well. It handles building (compiling), installing, and removing of
626 This term describes the file or files that are provided by the author of
627 the piece of software to distribute his work. All the changes necessary to
628 build on NetBSD are reflected in the corresponding package. Usually the
629 distfile is in the form of a compressed tar-archive, but other types are
630 possible, too. Distfiles are usually stored below /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles.
634 This is the term used by FreeBSD and OpenBSD people for what we call a
635 package. In NetBSD terminology, "port" refers to a different architecture.
637 Precompiled/binary package
639 A set of binaries built with pkgsrc from a distfile and stuffed together in
640 a single .tgz file so it can be installed on machines of the same machine
641 architecture without the need to recompile. Packages are usually generated
642 in /usr/pkgsrc/packages; there is also an archive on ftp.NetBSD.org.
644 Sometimes, this is referred to by the term "package" too, especially in the
645 context of precompiled packages.
649 The piece of software to be installed which will be constructed from all
650 the files in the distfile by the actions defined in the corresponding
653 1.3.1. Roles involved in pkgsrc
657 The pkgsrc users are people who use the packages provided by pkgsrc.
658 Typically they are system administrators. The people using the software
659 that is inside the packages (maybe called "end users") are not covered by
662 There are two kinds of pkgsrc users: Some only want to install pre-built
663 binary packages. Others build the pkgsrc packages from source, either for
664 installing them directly or for building binary packages themselves. For
665 pkgsrc users Part I, "The pkgsrc user's guide" should provide all necessary
670 A package maintainer creates packages as described in Part II, "The pkgsrc
673 infrastructure developers
675 These people are involved in all those files that live in the mk/ directory
676 and below. Only these people should need to read through Part III, "The
677 pkgsrc infrastructure internals", though others might be curious, too.
681 When giving examples for commands, shell prompts are used to show if the
682 command should/can be issued as root, or if "normal" user privileges are
683 sufficient. We use a # for root's shell prompt, and a % for users' shell
684 prompt, assuming they use the C-shell or tcsh.
686 Part I. The pkgsrc user's guide
690 2. Where to get pkgsrc and how to keep it up-to-date
692 2.1. Getting pkgsrc for the first time
695 2.1.2. Via anonymous CVS
697 2.2. Keeping pkgsrc up-to-date
702 3. Using pkgsrc on systems other than NetBSD
704 3.1. Binary distribution
705 3.2. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
706 3.3. Platform-specific notes
708 3.3.1. Darwin (Mac OS X)
718 4.1. Using binary packages
720 4.1.1. Finding binary packages
721 4.1.2. Installing binary packages
722 4.1.3. Deinstalling packages
723 4.1.4. Getting information about installed packages
724 4.1.5. Checking for security vulnerabilities in installed packages
725 4.1.6. Finding if newer versions of your installed packages are in
727 4.1.7. Other administrative functions
728 4.1.8. A word of warning
730 4.2. Building packages from source
733 4.2.2. Fetching distfiles
734 4.2.3. How to build and install
736 5. Configuring pkgsrc
738 5.1. General configuration
739 5.2. Variables affecting the build process
740 5.3. Variables affecting the installation process
741 5.4. Selecting and configuring the compiler
743 5.4.1. Selecting the compiler
744 5.4.2. Additional flags to the compiler (CFLAGS)
745 5.4.3. Additional flags to the linker (LDFLAGS)
747 5.5. Developer/advanced settings
748 5.6. Selecting Build Options
750 6. Creating binary packages
752 6.1. Building a single binary package
753 6.2. Settings for creation of binary packages
755 7. Creating binary packages for everything in pkgsrc (bulk builds)
757 7.1. Think first, build later
758 7.2. Requirements of a bulk build
759 7.3. Running an old-style bulk build
762 7.3.2. Other environmental considerations
765 7.3.5. Disk space requirements
766 7.3.6. Setting up a sandbox for chrooted builds
767 7.3.7. Building a partial set of packages
768 7.3.8. Uploading results of a bulk build
770 7.4. Running a pbulk-style bulk build
775 7.5. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection
777 7.5.1. Example of cdpack
779 8. Directory layout of the installed files
781 8.1. File system layout in ${LOCALBASE}
782 8.2. File system layout in ${VARBASE}
784 9. Frequently Asked Questions
786 9.1. Are there any mailing lists for pkg-related discussion?
787 9.2. Where's the pkgviews documentation?
788 9.3. Utilities for package management (pkgtools)
789 9.4. How to use pkgsrc as non-root
790 9.5. How to resume transfers when fetching distfiles?
791 9.6. How can I install/use modular X.org from pkgsrc?
792 9.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
793 9.8. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
794 9.9. How to fetch all distfiles at once
795 9.10. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?
796 9.11. What does "Could not find bsd.own.mk" mean?
797 9.12. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
798 9.13. How do I change the location of configuration files?
799 9.14. Automated security checks
800 9.15. Why do some packages ignore my CFLAGS?
801 9.16. A package does not build. What shall I do?
802 9.17. What does "Makefile appears to contain unresolved cvs/rcs/??? merge
805 Chapter 2. Where to get pkgsrc and how to keep it up-to-date
809 2.1. Getting pkgsrc for the first time
812 2.1.2. Via anonymous CVS
814 2.2. Keeping pkgsrc up-to-date
819 Before you download and extract the files, you need to decide where you want to
820 extract them. When using pkgsrc as root user, pkgsrc is usually installed in /
821 usr/pkgsrc. You are though free to install the sources and binary packages
822 wherever you want in your filesystem, provided that the pathname does not
823 contain white-space or other characters that are interpreted specially by the
824 shell and some other programs. A safe bet is to use only letters, digits,
825 underscores and dashes.
827 2.1. Getting pkgsrc for the first time
829 Before you download any pkgsrc files, you should decide whether you want the
830 current branch or the stable branch. The latter is forked on a quarterly basis
831 from the current branch and only gets modified for security updates. The names
832 of the stable branches are built from the year and the quarter, for example
835 The second step is to decide how you want to download pkgsrc. You can get it as
836 a tar file or via CVS. Both ways are described here.
840 The primary download location for all pkgsrc files is ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/
841 pkgsrc/. There are a number of subdirectories for different purposes, which are
842 described in detail in Appendix C, Directory layout of the pkgsrc FTP server.
844 The tar file for the current branch is in the directory current and is called
845 pkgsrc.tar.gz. It is autogenerated daily.
847 The tar file for the stable branch 2009Q1 is in the directory pkgsrc-2009Q1 and
848 is also called pkgsrc-2009Q1.tar.gz.
850 To download a pkgsrc stable tarball, run:
852 $ ftp ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-20xxQy/pkgsrc-20xxQy.tar.gz
854 Where pkgsrc-20xxQy is the stable branch to be downloaded, for example, "
857 Then, extract it with:
859 $ tar -xzf pkgsrc-20xxQy.tar.gz -C /usr
861 This will create the directory pkgsrc/ in /usr/ and all the package source will
862 be stored under /usr/pkgsrc/.
864 To download pkgsrc-current, run:
866 $ ftp ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc.tar.gz
868 2.1.2. Via anonymous CVS
870 To fetch a specific pkgsrc stable branch, run:
872 $ cd /usr && cvs -q -z3 -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -r pkgsrc-20xxQy -P pkgsrc
874 Where pkgsrc-20xxQy is the stable branch to be checked out, for example, "
877 This will create the directory pkgsrc/ in your /usr/ directory and all the
878 package source will be stored under /usr/pkgsrc/.
880 To fetch the pkgsrc current branch, run:
882 $ cd /usr && cvs -q -z3 -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -P pkgsrc
884 Refer to list of available CVS mirrors to choose faster one.
886 If you get error messages from rsh, you need to set CVS_RSH variable. E.g.:
888 $ cd /usr && env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -q -z3 -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -P pkgsrc
890 Refer to documentation on your command shell how to set CVS_RSH=ssh
891 permanently. For Bourne shells, you can set it in your .profile or better
892 globally in /etc/profile:
894 # set CVS remote shell command
898 By default, CVS doesn't do things like most people would expect it to do. But
899 there is a way to convince CVS, by creating a file called .cvsrc in your home
900 directory and saving the following lines to it. This file will save you lots of
901 headache and some bug reports, so we strongly recommend it. You can find an
902 explanation of this file in the CVS documentation.
904 # recommended CVS configuration file from the pkgsrc guide
912 2.2. Keeping pkgsrc up-to-date
914 The preferred way to keep pkgsrc up-to-date is via CVS (which also works if you
915 have first installed it via a tar file). It saves bandwidth and hard disk
916 activity, compared to downloading the tar file again.
922 When updating from a tar file, you first need to completely remove the old
923 pkgsrc directory. Otherwise those files that have been removed from pkgsrc in
924 the mean time will not be removed on your local disk, resulting in
925 inconsistencies. When removing the old files, any changes that you have done to
926 the pkgsrc files will be lost after updating. Therefore updating via CVS is
927 strongly recommended.
929 Note that by default the distfiles and the binary packages are saved in the
930 pkgsrc tree, so don't forget to rescue them before updating. You can also
931 configure pkgsrc to use other than the default directories by setting the
932 DISTDIR and PACKAGES variables. See Chapter 5, Configuring pkgsrc for the
935 To update pkgsrc from a tar file, download the tar file as explained above.
936 Then, make sure that you have not made any changes to the files in the pkgsrc
937 directory. Remove the pkgsrc directory and extract the new tar file. Done.
941 To update pkgsrc via CVS, change to the pkgsrc directory and run cvs:
943 $ cd /usr/pkgsrc && cvs update -dP
945 If you get error messages from rsh, you need to set CVS_RSH variable as
946 described above. E.g.:
948 $ cd /usr/pkgsrc && env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs up -dP
950 2.2.2.1. Switching between different pkgsrc branches
952 When updating pkgsrc, the CVS program keeps track of the branch you selected.
953 But if you, for whatever reason, want to switch from the stable branch to the
954 current one, you can do it by adding the option "-A" after the "update"
955 keyword. To switch from the current branch back to the stable branch, add the "
956 -rpkgsrc-2009Q3" option.
958 2.2.2.2. What happens to my changes when updating?
960 When you update pkgsrc, the CVS program will only touch those files that are
961 registered in the CVS repository. That means that any packages that you created
962 on your own will stay unmodified. If you change files that are managed by CVS,
963 later updates will try to merge your changes with those that have been done by
964 others. See the CVS manual, chapter "update" for details.
966 Chapter 3. Using pkgsrc on systems other than NetBSD
970 3.1. Binary distribution
971 3.2. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
972 3.3. Platform-specific notes
974 3.3.1. Darwin (Mac OS X)
982 3.1. Binary distribution
984 See Section 4.1, "Using binary packages".
986 3.2. Bootstrapping pkgsrc
988 Installing the bootstrap kit from source should be as simple as:
990 # env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout pkgsrc
991 # cd pkgsrc/bootstrap
995 See Chapter 2, Where to get pkgsrc and how to keep it up-to-date for other ways
996 to get pkgsrc before bootstrapping. The given bootstrap command will use the
997 defaults of /usr/pkg for the prefix where programs will be installed in, and /
998 var/db/pkg for the package database directory where pkgsrc will do its internal
999 bookkeeping. However, these can also be set using command-line arguments.
1003 The bootstrap installs a bmake tool. Use this bmake when building via pkgsrc.
1004 For examples in this guide, use bmake instead of "make".
1006 3.3. Platform-specific notes
1008 Here are some platform-specific notes you should be aware of.
1010 3.3.1. Darwin (Mac OS X)
1012 Darwin 5.x and up are supported. Before you start, you will need to download
1013 and install the Mac OS X Developer Tools from Apple's Developer Connection. See
1014 http://developer.apple.com/macosx/ for details. Also, make sure you install X11
1015 (an optional package included with the Developer Tools) if you intend to build
1016 packages that use the X11 Window System.
1020 FreeBSD 4.7 and 5.0 have been tested and are supported, other versions may
1023 Care should be taken so that the tools that this kit installs do not conflict
1024 with the FreeBSD userland tools. There are several steps:
1026 1. FreeBSD stores its ports pkg database in /var/db/pkg. It is therefore
1027 recommended that you choose a different location (e.g. /usr/pkgdb) by using
1028 the --pkgdbdir option to the bootstrap script.
1030 2. If you do not intend to use the FreeBSD ports tools, it's probably a good
1031 idea to move them out of the way to avoid confusion, e.g.
1034 # mv pkg_add pkg_add.orig
1035 # mv pkg_create pkg_create.orig
1036 # mv pkg_delete pkg_delete.orig
1037 # mv pkg_info pkg_info.orig
1040 3. An example mk.conf file will be placed in /etc/mk.conf.example file when
1041 you use the bootstrap script.
1045 Interix is a POSIX-compatible subsystem for the Windows NT kernel, providing a
1046 Unix-like environment with a tighter kernel integration than available with
1047 Cygwin. It is part of the Windows Services for Unix package, available for free
1048 for any licensed copy of Windows 2000, XP (not including XP Home), or 2003. SFU
1049 can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/.
1051 Services for Unix 3.5 has been tested. 3.0 or 3.1 may work, but are not
1052 officially supported. (The main difference in 3.0/3.1 is lack of pthreads, but
1053 other parts of libc may also be lacking.)
1055 Services for Unix Applications (aka SUA) is an integrated component of Windows
1056 Server 2003 R2 (5.2), Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (6.0), Windows 7
1057 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (6.1). As of this writing, the SUA's Interix 6.0
1058 (32bit) and 6.1 (64bit) subsystems have been tested. Other versions may work as
1059 well. The Interix 5.x subsystem has not yet been tested with pkgsrc.
1061 3.3.3.1. When installing Interix/SFU
1063 At an absolute minimum, the following packages must be installed from the
1064 Windows Services for Unix 3.5 distribution in order to use pkgsrc:
1066 * Utilities -> Base Utilities
1068 * Interix GNU Components -> (all)
1070 * Remote Connectivity
1074 When using pkgsrc on Interix, DO NOT install the Utilities subcomponent "UNIX
1075 Perl". That is Perl 5.6 without shared module support, installed to /usr/local,
1076 and will only cause confusion. Instead, install Perl 5.8 from pkgsrc (or from a
1079 The Remote Connectivity subcomponent "Windows Remote Shell Service" does not
1080 need to be installed, but Remote Connectivity itself should be installed in
1081 order to have a working inetd.
1083 During installation you may be asked whether to enable setuid behavior for
1084 Interix programs, and whether to make pathnames default to case-sensitive.
1085 Setuid should be enabled, and case-sensitivity MUST be enabled. (Without
1086 case-sensitivity, a large number of packages including perl will not build.)
1088 NOTE: Newer Windows service packs change the way binary execution works (via
1089 the Data Execution Prevention feature). In order to use pkgsrc and other
1090 gcc-compiled binaries reliably, a hotfix containing POSIX.EXE, PSXDLL.DLL,
1091 PSXRUN.EXE, and PSXSS.EXE (899522 or newer) must be installed. Hotfixes are
1092 available from Microsoft through a support contract; however, Debian Interix
1093 Port has made most Interix hotfixes available for personal use from http://
1094 www.debian-interix.net/hotfixes/.
1096 In addition to the hotfix noted above, it may be necessary to disable Data
1097 Execution Prevention entirely to make Interix functional. This may happen only
1098 with certain types of CPUs; the cause is not fully understood at this time. If
1099 gcc or other applications still segfault repeatedly after installing one of the
1100 hotfixes note above, the following option can be added to the appropriate
1101 "boot.ini" line on the Windows boot drive: /NoExecute=AlwaysOff (WARNING, this
1102 will disable DEP completely, which may be a security risk if applications are
1103 often run as a user in the Administrators group!)
1105 3.3.3.2. What to do if Interix/SFU is already installed
1107 If SFU is already installed and you wish to alter these settings to work with
1108 pkgsrc, note the following things.
1110 * To uninstall UNIX Perl, use Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Windows
1111 Services for UNIX, then click Change. In the installer, choose Add or
1112 Remove, then uncheck Utilities->UNIX Perl.
1114 * To enable case-sensitivity for the file system, run REGEDIT.EXE, and change
1115 the following registry key:
1117 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\kernel
1119 Set the DWORD value "obcaseinsensitive" to 0; then reboot.
1121 * To enable setuid binaries (optional), run REGEDIT.EXE, and change the
1122 following registry key:
1124 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Services for UNIX
1126 Set the DWORD value "EnableSetuidBinaries" to 1; then reboot.
1128 3.3.3.3. Important notes for using pkgsrc
1130 The package manager (either the pkgsrc "su" user, or the user running
1131 "pkg_add") must be a member of the local Administrators group. Such a user must
1132 also be used to run the bootstrap. This is slightly relaxed from the normal
1133 pkgsrc requirement of "root".
1135 The package manager should use a umask of 002. "make install" will
1136 automatically complain if this is not the case. This ensures that directories
1137 written in /var/db/pkg are Administrators-group writeable.
1139 The popular Interix binary packages from http://www.interopsystems.com/ use an
1140 older version of pkgsrc's pkg_* tools. Ideally, these should NOT be used in
1141 conjunction with pkgsrc. If you choose to use them at the same time as the
1142 pkgsrc packages, ensure that you use the proper pkg_* tools for each type of
1145 The TERM setting used for DOS-type console windows (including those invoked by
1146 the csh and ksh startup shortcuts) is "interix". Most systems don't have a
1147 termcap/terminfo entry for it, but the following .termcap entry provides
1148 adequate emulation in most cases:
1150 interix:kP=\E[S:kN=\E[T:kH=\E[U:dc@:DC@:tc=pcansi:
1153 3.3.3.4. Limitations of the Interix platform
1155 Though Interix suffices as a familiar and flexible substitute for a full
1156 Unix-like platform, it has some drawbacks that should be noted for those
1157 desiring to make the most of Interix.
1161 Interix comes with the standard set of X11R6 client libraries, and can run
1162 X11 based applications, but it does not come with an X server. Some options
1163 are StarNet X-Win32, Hummingbird Exceed (available in a trimmed version for
1164 Interix from Interop Systems as the Interop X Server), and the free X11
1165 server included with Cygwin.
1169 Because Interix runs in a completely different NT subsystem from Win32
1170 applications, it does not currently support various X11 protocol extensions
1171 for acceleration (such as MIT-SHM or DGA). Most interactive applications to
1172 a local X server will run reasonably fast, but full motion video and other
1173 graphics intensive applications may require a faster-than-expected CPU.
1177 Interix has no native support for audio output. For audio support, pkgsrc
1178 uses the esound client/server audio system on Interix. Unlike on most
1179 platforms, the audio/esound package does not contain the esd server
1180 component. To output audio via an Interix host, the emulators/cygwin_esound
1181 package must also be installed.
1183 * CD/DVDs, USB, and SCSI:
1185 Direct device access is not currently supported in Interix, so it is not
1186 currently possible to access CD/DVD drives, USB devices, or SCSI devices
1187 through non-filesystem means. Among other things, this makes it impossible
1188 to use Interix directly for CD/DVD burning.
1192 Due to the same limitations as for CD-ROMs and SCSI devices, tape drives
1193 are also not directly accessible in Interix. However, support is in work to
1194 make tape drive access possible by using Cygwin as a bridge (similarly to
1195 audio bridged via Cygwin's esound server).
1197 3.3.3.5. Known issues for pkgsrc on Interix
1199 It is not necessary, in general, to have a "root" user on the Windows system;
1200 any member of the local Administrators group will suffice. However, some
1201 packages currently assume that the user named "root" is the privileged user. To
1202 accommodate these, you may create such a user; make sure it is in the local
1203 group Administrators (or your language equivalent).
1205 pkg_add creates directories of mode 0755, not 0775, in $PKG_DBDIR. For the time
1206 being, install packages as the local Administrator (or your language
1207 equivalent), or run the following command after installing a package to work
1210 # chmod -R g+w $PKG_DBDIR
1215 You will need a working C compiler, either gcc or SGI's MIPS and MIPSpro
1216 compiler (cc/c89). Please set the CC environment variable according to your
1217 preference. If you do not have a license for the MIPSpro compiler suite, you
1218 can download a gcc tardist file from http://freeware.sgi.com/.
1220 Please note that you will need IRIX 6.5.17 or higher, as this is the earliest
1221 version of IRIX providing support for if_indextoname(3), if_nametoindex(3),
1224 At this point in time, pkgsrc only supports one ABI at a time. That is, you
1225 cannot switch between the old 32-bit ABI, the new 32-bit ABI and the 64-bit
1226 ABI. If you start out using "abi=n32", that's what all your packages will be
1229 Therefore, please make sure that you have no conflicting CFLAGS in your
1230 environment or the mk.conf. Particularly, make sure that you do not try to link
1231 n32 object files with lib64 or vice versa. Check your /etc/compiler.defaults!
1233 If you have the actual pkgsrc tree mounted via NFS from a different host,
1234 please make sure to set WRKOBJDIR to a local directory, as it appears that IRIX
1235 linker occasionally runs into issues when trying to link over a network-mounted
1238 The bootstrapping process should set all the right options for programs such as
1239 imake(1), but you may want to set some options depending on your local setup.
1240 Please see pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf and, of course, your compiler's man pages
1243 If you are using SGI's MIPSPro compiler, please set
1245 PKGSRC_COMPILER= mipspro
1248 in mk.conf. Otherwise, pkgsrc will assume you are using gcc and may end up
1249 passing invalid flags to the compiler. Note that bootstrap should create an
1250 appropriate mk.conf.example by default.
1252 If you have both the MIPSPro compiler chain installed as well as gcc, but want
1253 to make sure that MIPSPro is used, please set your PATH to not include the
1254 location of gcc (often /usr/freeware/bin), and (important) pass the
1255 '--preserve-path' flag.
1259 Some versions of Linux (for example Debian GNU/Linux) need either libtermcap or
1260 libcurses (libncurses). Installing the distributions libncurses-dev package (or
1261 equivalent) should fix the problem.
1263 pkgsrc supports both gcc (GNU Compiler Collection) and icc (Intel C++
1264 Compiler). gcc is the default. icc 8.0 and 8.1 on i386 have been tested.
1266 To bootstrap using icc, assuming the default icc installation directory:
1268 env CC=/opt/intel_cc_80/bin/icc LDFLAGS=-static-libcxa \
1269 ac_cv___attribute__=yes ./bootstrap
1274 icc 8.1 needs the `-i-static' argument instead of -static-libcxa.
1276 icc supports __attribute__, but the GNU configure test uses a nested function,
1277 which icc does not support. #undef'ing __attribute__ has the unfortunate
1278 side-effect of breaking many of the Linux header files, which cannot be
1279 compiled properly without __attribute__. The test must be overridden so that
1280 __attribute__ is assumed supported by the compiler.
1282 After bootstrapping, you should set PKGSRC_COMPILER in mk.conf:
1284 PKGSRC_COMPILER= icc
1287 The default installation directory for icc is /opt/intel_cc_80, which is also
1288 the pkgsrc default. If you have installed it into a different directory, set
1294 pkgsrc uses the static linking method of the runtime libraries provided by icc,
1295 so binaries can be run on other systems which do not have the shared libraries
1298 Libtool, however, extracts a list of libraries from the ld(1) command run when
1299 linking a C++ shared library and records it, throwing away the -Bstatic and
1300 -Bdynamic options interspersed between the libraries. This means that
1301 libtool-linked C++ shared libraries will have a runtime dependency on the icc
1302 libraries until this is fixed in libtool.
1306 OpenBSD 3.0 and 3.2 are tested and supported.
1308 Care should be taken so that the tools that this kit installs do not conflict
1309 with the OpenBSD userland tools. There are several steps:
1311 1. OpenBSD stores its ports pkg database in /var/db/pkg. It is therefore
1312 recommended that you choose a different location (e.g. /usr/pkgdb) by using
1313 the --pkgdbdir option to the bootstrap script.
1315 2. If you do not intend to use the OpenBSD ports tools, it's probably a good
1316 idea to move them out of the way to avoid confusion, e.g.
1319 # mv pkg_add pkg_add.orig
1320 # mv pkg_create pkg_create.orig
1321 # mv pkg_delete pkg_delete.orig
1322 # mv pkg_info pkg_info.orig
1325 3. An example mk.conf file will be placed in /etc/mk.conf.example file when
1326 you use the bootstrap script. OpenBSD's make program uses mk.conf as well.
1327 You can work around this by enclosing all the pkgsrc-specific parts of the
1331 # pkgsrc stuff, e.g. insert defaults/mk.conf or similar here
1339 Solaris 2.6 through 9 are supported on both x86 and sparc. You will need a
1340 working C compiler. Both gcc 2.95.3 and Sun WorkShop 5 have been tested.
1342 The following packages are required on Solaris 8 for the bootstrap process and
1355 Please note that the use of GNU binutils on Solaris is not supported, as of
1358 Whichever compiler you use, please ensure the compiler tools and your $prefix
1359 are in your PATH. This includes /usr/ccs/{bin,lib} and e.g. /usr/pkg/
1362 3.3.7.1. If you are using gcc
1364 It makes life much simpler if you only use the same gcc consistently for
1365 building all packages.
1367 It is recommended that an external gcc be used only for bootstrapping, then
1368 either build gcc from lang/gcc or install a binary gcc package, then remove gcc
1369 used during bootstrapping.
1371 Binary packages of gcc can be found through http://www.sunfreeware.com/.
1373 3.3.7.2. If you are using Sun WorkShop
1375 You will need at least the following packages installed (from WorkShop 5.0)
1377 * SPROcc - Sun WorkShop Compiler C 5.0
1379 * SPROcpl - Sun WorkShop Compiler C++ 5.0
1381 * SPROild - Sun WorkShop Incremental Linker
1383 * SPROlang - Sun WorkShop Compilers common components
1385 You should set the following variables in your mk.conf file:
1394 The CPP setting might break some packages that use the C preprocessor for
1395 processing things other than C source code.
1397 3.3.7.3. Building 64-bit binaries with SunPro
1399 To build 64-bit packages, you just need to have the following lines in your
1402 PKGSRC_COMPILER= sunpro
1407 This setting has been tested for the SPARC architecture. Intel and AMD machines
1408 need some more work.
1410 3.3.7.4. Common problems
1412 Sometimes, when using libtool, /bin/ksh crashes with a segmentation fault. The
1413 workaround is to use another shell for the configure scripts, for example by
1414 installing shells/bash and adding the following lines to your mk.conf:
1416 CONFIG_SHELL= ${LOCALBASE}/bin/bash
1417 WRAPPER_SHELL= ${LOCALBASE}/bin/bash
1420 Then, rebuild the devel/libtool-base package.
1422 Chapter 4. Using pkgsrc
1426 4.1. Using binary packages
1428 4.1.1. Finding binary packages
1429 4.1.2. Installing binary packages
1430 4.1.3. Deinstalling packages
1431 4.1.4. Getting information about installed packages
1432 4.1.5. Checking for security vulnerabilities in installed packages
1433 4.1.6. Finding if newer versions of your installed packages are in pkgsrc
1434 4.1.7. Other administrative functions
1435 4.1.8. A word of warning
1437 4.2. Building packages from source
1440 4.2.2. Fetching distfiles
1441 4.2.3. How to build and install
1443 Basically, there are two ways of using pkgsrc. The first is to only install the
1444 package tools and to use binary packages that someone else has prepared. This
1445 is the "pkg" in pkgsrc. The second way is to install the "src" of pkgsrc, too.
1446 Then you are able to build your own packages, and you can still use binary
1447 packages from someone else.
1449 4.1. Using binary packages
1451 On the ftp.NetBSD.org server and its mirrors, there are collections of binary
1452 packages, ready to be installed. These binary packages have been built using
1453 the default settings for the directories, that is:
1455 * /usr/pkg for LOCALBASE, where most of the files are installed,
1457 * /usr/pkg/etc for configuration files,
1459 * /var for VARBASE, where those files are installed that may change after
1462 If you cannot use these directories for whatever reasons (maybe because you're
1463 not root), you cannot use these binary packages, but have to build the packages
1464 yourself, which is explained in Section 3.2, "Bootstrapping pkgsrc".
1466 4.1.1. Finding binary packages
1468 To install binary packages, you first need to know from where to get them. The
1469 first place where you should look is on the main pkgsrc FTP server in the
1470 directory /pub/pkgsrc/packages.
1472 This directory contains binary packages for multiple platforms. First, select
1473 your operating system. (Ignore the directories with version numbers attached to
1474 it, they just exist for legacy reasons.) Then, select your hardware
1475 architecture, and in the third step, the OS version and the "version" of
1478 In this directory, you often find a file called bootstrap.tar.gz which contains
1479 the package management tools. If the file is missing, it is likely that your
1480 operating system already provides those tools. Download the file and extract it
1481 in the / directory. It will create the directories /usr/pkg (containing the
1482 tools for managing binary packages) and /var/db/pkg (the database of installed
1485 4.1.2. Installing binary packages
1487 In the directory from the last section, there is a subdirectory called All,
1488 which contains all the binary packages that are available for the platform,
1489 excluding those that may not be distributed via FTP or CDROM (depending on
1490 which medium you are using).
1492 To install packages directly from an FTP or HTTP server, run the following
1493 commands in a Bourne-compatible shell (be sure to su to root first):
1495 # PATH="/usr/pkg/sbin:$PATH"
1496 # PKG_PATH="ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/OPSYS/ARCH/VERSIONS/All"
1497 # export PATH PKG_PATH
1499 Instead of URLs, you can also use local paths, for example if you are
1500 installing from a set of CDROMs, DVDs or an NFS-mounted repository. If you want
1501 to install packages from multiple sources, you can separate them by a semicolon
1504 After these preparations, installing a package is very easy:
1506 # pkg_add openoffice2
1508 # pkg_add ap2-php5-*
1510 Note that any prerequisite packages needed to run the package in question will
1511 be installed, too, assuming they are present where you install from.
1513 Adding packages might install vulnerable packages. Thus you should run
1514 pkg_admin audit regularly, especially after installing new packages, and verify
1515 that the vulnerabilities are acceptable for your configuration.
1517 After you've installed packages, be sure to have /usr/pkg/bin and /usr/pkg/sbin
1518 in your PATH so you can actually start the just installed program.
1520 4.1.3. Deinstalling packages
1522 To deinstall a package, it does not matter whether it was installed from source
1523 code or from a binary package. The pkg_delete command does not know it anyway.
1524 To delete a package, you can just run pkg_delete package-name. The package name
1525 can be given with or without version number. Wildcards can also be used to
1526 deinstall a set of packages, for example *emacs*. Be sure to include them in
1527 quotes, so that the shell does not expand them before pkg_delete sees them.
1529 The -r option is very powerful: it removes all the packages that require the
1530 package in question and then removes the package itself. For example:
1532 # pkg_delete -r jpeg
1535 will remove jpeg and all the packages that used it; this allows upgrading the
1538 4.1.4. Getting information about installed packages
1540 The pkg_info shows information about installed packages or binary package
1543 4.1.5. Checking for security vulnerabilities in installed packages
1545 The NetBSD Security-Officer and Packages Groups maintain a list of known
1546 security vulnerabilities to packages which are (or have been) included in
1547 pkgsrc. The list is available from the NetBSD FTP site at ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/
1548 pub/pkgsrc/distfiles/vulnerabilities.
1550 Through pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities, this list can be downloaded
1551 automatically, and a security audit of all packages installed on a system can
1554 There are two components to auditing. The first step, pkg_admin
1555 fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities, is for downloading the list of vulnerabilities from
1556 the NetBSD FTP site. The second step, pkg_admin audit, checks to see if any of
1557 your installed packages are vulnerable. If a package is vulnerable, you will
1558 see output similar to the following:
1560 Package samba-2.0.9 has a local-root-shell vulnerability, see
1561 http://www.samba.org/samba/whatsnew/macroexploit.html
1563 You may wish to have the vulnerabilities file downloaded daily so that it
1564 remains current. This may be done by adding an appropriate entry to the root
1565 users crontab(5) entry. For example the entry
1567 # download vulnerabilities file
1568 0 3 * * * /usr/sbin/pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities >/dev/null 2>&1
1571 will update the vulnerability list every day at 3AM. You may wish to do this
1572 more often than once a day. In addition, you may wish to run the package audit
1573 from the daily security script. This may be accomplished by adding the
1574 following line to /etc/security.local:
1576 /usr/sbin/pkg_admin audit
1579 4.1.6. Finding if newer versions of your installed packages are in pkgsrc
1581 Install pkgtools/lintpkgsrc and run lintpkgsrc with the "-i" argument to check
1582 if your packages are up-to-date, e.g.
1586 Version mismatch: 'tcsh' 6.09.00 vs 6.10.00
1589 You can then use make update to update the package on your system and rebuild
1592 4.1.7. Other administrative functions
1594 The pkg_admin executes various administrative functions on the package system.
1596 4.1.8. A word of warning
1598 Please pay very careful attention to the warnings expressed in the pkg_add(1)
1599 manual page about the inherent dangers of installing binary packages which you
1600 did not create yourself, and the security holes that can be introduced onto
1601 your system by indiscriminate adding of such files.
1603 The same warning of course applies to every package you install from source
1604 when you haven't completely read and understood the source code of the package,
1605 the compiler that is used to build the package and all the other tools that are
1608 4.2. Building packages from source
1610 After obtaining pkgsrc, the pkgsrc directory now contains a set of packages,
1611 organized into categories. You can browse the online index of packages, or run
1612 make readme from the pkgsrc directory to build local README.html files for all
1613 packages, viewable with any web browser such as www/lynx or www/firefox.
1615 The default prefix for installed packages is /usr/pkg. If you wish to change
1616 this, you should do so by setting LOCALBASE in mk.conf. You should not try to
1617 use multiple different LOCALBASE definitions on the same system (inside a
1618 chroot is an exception).
1620 The rest of this chapter assumes that the package is already in pkgsrc. If it
1621 is not, see Part II, "The pkgsrc developer's guide" for instructions how to
1622 create your own packages.
1626 To build packages from source, you need a working C compiler. On NetBSD, you
1627 need to install the "comp" and the "text" distribution sets. If you want to
1628 build X11-related packages, the "xbase" and "xcomp" distribution sets are
1631 4.2.2. Fetching distfiles
1633 The first step for building a package is downloading the distfiles (i.e. the
1634 unmodified source). If they have not yet been downloaded, pkgsrc will fetch
1637 If you have all files that you need in the distfiles directory, you don't need
1638 to connect. If the distfiles are on CD-ROM, you can mount the CD-ROM on /cdrom
1641 DISTDIR=/cdrom/pkgsrc/distfiles
1645 By default a list of distribution sites will be randomly intermixed to prevent
1646 huge load on servers which holding popular packages (for example,
1647 SourceForge.net mirrors). Thus, every time when you need to fetch yet another
1648 distfile all the mirrors will be tried in new (random) order. You can turn this
1649 feature off by setting MASTER_SORT_RANDOM=NO (for PKG_DEVELOPERs it's already
1652 You can overwrite some of the major distribution sites to fit to sites that are
1653 close to your own. By setting one or two variables you can modify the order in
1654 which the master sites are accessed. MASTER_SORT contains a whitespace
1655 delimited list of domain suffixes. MASTER_SORT_REGEX is even more flexible, it
1656 contains a whitespace delimited list of regular expressions. It has higher
1657 priority than MASTER_SORT. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf to find
1658 some examples. This may save some of your bandwidth and time.
1660 You can change these settings either in your shell's environment, or, if you
1661 want to keep the settings, by editing the mk.conf file, and adding the
1664 If a package depends on many other packages (such as meta-pkgs/kde3), the build
1665 process may alternate between periods of downloading source, and compiling. To
1666 ensure you have all the source downloaded initially you can run the command:
1668 % make fetch-list | sh
1670 which will output and run a set of shell commands to fetch the necessary files
1671 into the distfiles directory. You can also choose to download the files
1674 4.2.3. How to build and install
1676 Once the software has downloaded, any patches will be applied, then it will be
1677 compiled for you. This may take some time depending on your computer, and how
1678 many other packages the software depends on and their compile time.
1682 If using bootstrap or pkgsrc on a non-NetBSD system, use the pkgsrc bmake
1683 command instead of "make" in the examples in this guide.
1691 at the shell prompt to build the various components of the package.
1693 The next stage is to actually install the newly compiled program onto your
1694 system. Do this by entering:
1699 while you are still in the directory for whatever package you are installing.
1701 Installing the package on your system may require you to be root. However,
1702 pkgsrc has a just-in-time-su feature, which allows you to only become root for
1703 the actual installation step.
1705 That's it, the software should now be installed and setup for use. You can now
1711 to remove the compiled files in the work directory, as you shouldn't need them
1712 any more. If other packages were also added to your system (dependencies) to
1713 allow your program to compile, you can tidy these up also with the command:
1715 % make clean-depends
1718 Taking the figlet utility as an example, we can install it on our system by
1719 building as shown in Appendix B, Build logs.
1721 The program is installed under the default root of the packages tree - /usr/
1722 pkg. Should this not conform to your tastes, set the LOCALBASE variable in your
1723 environment, and it will use that value as the root of your packages tree. So,
1724 to use /usr/local, set LOCALBASE=/usr/local in your environment. Please note
1725 that you should use a directory which is dedicated to packages and not shared
1726 with other programs (i.e., do not try and use LOCALBASE=/usr). Also, you should
1727 not try to add any of your own files or directories (such as src/, obj/, or
1728 pkgsrc/) below the LOCALBASE tree. This is to prevent possible conflicts
1729 between programs and other files installed by the package system and whatever
1730 else may have been installed there.
1732 Some packages look in mk.conf to alter some configuration options at build
1733 time. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf to get an overview of what will
1734 be set there by default. Environment variables such as LOCALBASE can be set in
1735 mk.conf to save having to remember to set them each time you want to use
1738 Occasionally, people want to "look under the covers" to see what is going on
1739 when a package is building or being installed. This may be for debugging
1740 purposes, or out of simple curiosity. A number of utility values have been
1741 added to help with this.
1743 1. If you invoke the make(1) command with PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2, then a huge
1744 amount of information will be displayed. For example,
1746 make patch PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2
1748 will show all the commands that are invoked, up to and including the "patch
1751 2. If you want to know the value of a certain make(1) definition, then the
1752 VARNAME definition should be used, in conjunction with the show-var target.
1753 e.g. to show the expansion of the make(1) variable LOCALBASE:
1755 % make show-var VARNAME=LOCALBASE
1760 If you want to install a binary package that you've either created yourself
1761 (see next section), that you put into pkgsrc/packages manually or that is
1762 located on a remote FTP server, you can use the "bin-install" target. This
1763 target will install a binary package - if available - via pkg_add(1), else do a
1764 make package. The list of remote FTP sites searched is kept in the variable
1765 BINPKG_SITES, which defaults to ftp.NetBSD.org. Any flags that should be added
1766 to pkg_add(1) can be put into BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS. See pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf
1769 A final word of warning: If you set up a system that has a non-standard setting
1770 for LOCALBASE, be sure to set that before any packages are installed, as you
1771 cannot use several directories for the same purpose. Doing so will result in
1772 pkgsrc not being able to properly detect your installed packages, and fail
1773 miserably. Note also that precompiled binary packages are usually built with
1774 the default LOCALBASE of /usr/pkg, and that you should not install any if you
1775 use a non-standard LOCALBASE.
1777 Chapter 5. Configuring pkgsrc
1781 5.1. General configuration
1782 5.2. Variables affecting the build process
1783 5.3. Variables affecting the installation process
1784 5.4. Selecting and configuring the compiler
1786 5.4.1. Selecting the compiler
1787 5.4.2. Additional flags to the compiler (CFLAGS)
1788 5.4.3. Additional flags to the linker (LDFLAGS)
1790 5.5. Developer/advanced settings
1791 5.6. Selecting Build Options
1793 The whole pkgsrc system is configured in a single file, usually called mk.conf.
1794 In which directory pkgsrc looks for that file depends on the installation. On
1795 NetBSD, when you use make(1) from the base system, it is in the directory /etc
1796 /. In all other cases the default location is ${PREFIX}/etc/, depending on
1797 where you told the bootstrap program to install the binary packages.
1799 During the bootstrap, an example configuration file is created. To use that,
1800 you have to create the directory ${PREFIX}/etc and copy the example file there.
1802 The format of the configuration file is that of the usual BSD-style Makefiles.
1803 The whole pkgsrc configuration is done by setting variables in this file. Note
1804 that you can define all kinds of variables, and no special error checking (for
1805 example for spelling mistakes) takes place, so you have to try it out to see if
1808 5.1. General configuration
1810 In this section, you can find some variables that apply to all pkgsrc packages.
1811 A complete list of the variables that can be configured by the user is
1812 available in mk/defaults/mk.conf, together with some comments that describe
1813 each variable's intent.
1815 * LOCALBASE: Where packages will be installed. The default is /usr/pkg. Do
1816 not mix binary packages with different LOCALBASEs!
1818 * CROSSBASE: Where "cross" category packages will be installed. The default
1819 is ${LOCALBASE}/cross.
1821 * X11BASE: Where X11 is installed on the system. The default is /usr/X11R6.
1823 * DISTDIR: Where to store the downloaded copies of the original source
1824 distributions used for building pkgsrc packages. The default is $
1825 {PKGSRCDIR}/distfiles.
1827 * PKG_DBDIR: Where the database about installed packages is stored. The
1828 default is /var/db/pkg.
1830 * MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE: If set, override the packages' MASTER_SITES with this
1833 * MASTER_SITE_BACKUP: Backup location(s) for distribution files and patch
1834 files if not found locally or in ${MASTER_SITES} or ${PATCH_SITES}
1835 respectively. The defaults are ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/distfiles/$
1836 {DIST_SUBDIR}/ and ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles/$
1839 * BINPKG_SITES: List of sites carrying binary pkgs. rel and arch are replaced
1840 with OS release ("2.0", etc.) and architecture ("mipsel", etc.).
1842 * ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES: List of acceptable licenses. License names are
1843 case-sensitive. Whenever you try to build a package whose license is not in
1844 this list, you will get an error message. If the license condition is
1845 simple enough, the error message will include specific instructions on how
1846 to change this variable.
1848 5.2. Variables affecting the build process
1852 * PACKAGES: The top level directory for the binary packages. The default is $
1853 {PKGSRCDIR}/packages.
1855 * WRKOBJDIR: The top level directory where, if defined, the separate working
1856 directories will get created, and symbolically linked to from ${WRKDIR}
1857 (see below). This is useful for building packages on several architectures,
1858 then ${PKGSRCDIR} can be NFS-mounted while ${WRKOBJDIR} is local to every
1859 architecture. (It should be noted that PKGSRCDIR should not be set by the
1860 user ? it is an internal definition which refers to the root of the pkgsrc
1861 tree. It is possible to have many pkgsrc tree instances.)
1863 * LOCALPATCHES: Directory for local patches that aren't part of pkgsrc. See
1864 Section 11.3, "patches/*" for more information.
1866 * PKGMAKECONF: Location of the mk.conf file used by a package's BSD-style
1867 Makefile. If this is not set, MAKECONF is set to /dev/null to avoid picking
1868 up settings used by builds in /usr/src.
1870 * DEPENDS_TARGET: By default, dependencies are only installed, and no binary
1871 package is created for them. You can set this variable to package to
1872 automatically create binary packages after installing dependencies.
1874 5.3. Variables affecting the installation process
1876 Most packages support installation into a subdirectory of WRKDIR. This allows a
1877 package to be built, before the actual filesystem is touched. DESTDIR support
1878 exists in two variations:
1880 * Basic DESTDIR support means that the package installation and packaging is
1883 * Full DESTDIR support can run the complete build, installation and packaging
1884 as normal user. Root privileges are only needed to add packages.
1886 DESTDIR support is now the default. To switch back to non-DESTDIR, you can set
1887 USE_DESTDIR=no; this setting will be deprecated though, so it's preferable to
1888 convert a package to DESTDIR instead.
1890 DESTDIR support changes the behaviour of various targets slightly. To install a
1891 package after building it, use package-install. package and install don't do
1892 that any longer. package-install can be used as DEPENDS_TARGET. bin-install
1893 will ask for the root password to install the package and fail, package-install
1896 With basic DESTDIR support, make clean needs to be run as root.
1898 Considering the foo/bar package, DESTDIR full support can be tested using the
1902 uid=1000(myusername) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),0(wheel)
1903 $ mkdir $HOME/packages
1904 $ cd $PKGSRCDIR/foo/bar
1906 Verify DESTDIR full support, no root privileges should be needed
1908 $ make USE_DESTDIR=yes install
1910 Create a package without root privileges
1912 $ make USE_DESTDIR=yes PACKAGES=$HOME/packages package
1914 For the following command, you must be able to gain root privileges using su(1)
1916 $ make USE_DESTDIR=yes PACKAGES=$HOME/packages package-install
1918 Then, as a simple user
1922 5.4. Selecting and configuring the compiler
1924 5.4.1. Selecting the compiler
1926 By default, pkgsrc will use GCC to build packages. This may be overridden by
1927 setting the following variables in /etc/mk.conf:
1931 This is a list of values specifying the chain of compilers to invoke when
1932 building packages. Valid values are:
1934 * distcc: distributed C/C++ (chainable)
1936 * ccache: compiler cache (chainable)
1938 * gcc: GNU C/C++ Compiler
1940 * mipspro: Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPSpro (n32/n64)
1942 * mipspro: Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPSpro (o32)
1944 * sunpro: Sun Microsystems, Inc. WorkShip/Forte/Sun ONE Studio
1946 The default is "gcc". You can use ccache and/or distcc with an appropriate
1947 PKGSRC_COMPILER setting, e.g. "ccache gcc". This variable should always be
1948 terminated with a value for a real compiler. Note that only one real
1949 compiler should be listed (e.g. "sunpro gcc" is not allowed).
1953 This specifies the minimum version of GCC to use when building packages. If
1954 the system GCC doesn't satisfy this requirement, then pkgsrc will build and
1955 install one of the GCC packages to use instead.
1957 5.4.2. Additional flags to the compiler (CFLAGS)
1959 If you wish to set the CFLAGS variable, please make sure to use the += operator
1960 instead of the = operator:
1962 CFLAGS+= -your -flags
1964 Using CFLAGS= (i.e. without the "+") may lead to problems with packages that
1965 need to add their own flags. You may want to take a look at the devel/cpuflags
1966 package if you're interested in optimization specifically for the current CPU.
1968 5.4.3. Additional flags to the linker (LDFLAGS)
1970 If you want to pass flags to the linker, both in the configure step and the
1971 build step, you can do this in two ways. Either set LDFLAGS or LIBS. The
1972 difference between the two is that LIBS will be appended to the command line,
1973 while LDFLAGS come earlier. LDFLAGS is pre-loaded with rpath settings for ELF
1974 machines depending on the setting of USE_IMAKE or the inclusion of mk/
1975 x11.buildlink3.mk. As with CFLAGS, if you do not wish to override these
1976 settings, use the += operator:
1978 LDFLAGS+= -your -linkerflags
1980 5.5. Developer/advanced settings
1984 * PKG_DEVELOPER: Run some sanity checks that package developers want:
1986 o make sure patches apply with zero fuzz
1988 o run check-shlibs to see that all binaries will find their shared libs.
1990 * PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL: The level of debugging output which is displayed whilst
1991 making and installing the package. The default value for this is 0, which
1992 will not display the commands as they are executed (normal, default, quiet
1993 operation); the value 1 will display all shell commands before their
1994 invocation, and the value 2 will display both the shell commands before
1995 their invocation, and their actual execution progress with set -x will be
1998 5.6. Selecting Build Options
2000 Some packages have build time options, usually to select between different
2001 dependencies, enable optional support for big dependencies or enable
2002 experimental features.
2004 To see which options, if any, a package supports, and which options are
2005 mutually exclusive, run make show-options, for example:
2007 The following options are supported by this package:
2008 ssl Enable SSL support.
2009 Exactly one of the following gecko options is required:
2010 firefox Use firefox as gecko rendering engine.
2011 mozilla Use mozilla as gecko rendering engine.
2012 At most one of the following database options may be selected:
2013 mysql Enable support for MySQL database.
2014 pgsql Enable support for PostgreSQL database.
2016 These options are enabled by default: firefox
2017 These options are currently enabled: mozilla ssl
2019 The following variables can be defined in mk.conf to select which options to
2020 enable for a package: PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS, which can be used to select or
2021 disable options for all packages that support them, and PKG_OPTIONS.pkgbase,
2022 which can be used to select or disable options specifically for package pkgbase
2023 . Options listed in these variables are selected, options preceded by "-" are
2024 disabled. A few examples:
2026 $ grep "PKG.*OPTION" mk.conf
2027 PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS= -arts -dvdread -esound
2028 PKG_OPTIONS.kdebase= debug -sasl
2029 PKG_OPTIONS.apache= suexec
2031 It is important to note that options that were specifically suggested by the
2032 package maintainer must be explicitly removed if you do not wish to include the
2033 option. If you are unsure you can view the current state with make show-options
2036 The following settings are consulted in the order given, and the last setting
2037 that selects or disables an option is used:
2039 1. the default options as suggested by the package maintainer
2041 2. the options implied by the settings of legacy variables (see below)
2043 3. PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS
2045 4. PKG_OPTIONS.pkgbase
2047 For groups of mutually exclusive options, the last option selected is used, all
2048 others are automatically disabled. If an option of the group is explicitly
2049 disabled, the previously selected option, if any, is used. It is an error if no
2050 option from a required group of options is selected, and building the package
2053 Before the options framework was introduced, build options were selected by
2054 setting a variable (often named USE_FOO) in mk.conf for each option. To ease
2055 transition to the options framework for the user, these legacy variables are
2056 converted to the appropriate options setting (PKG_OPTIONS.pkgbase)
2057 automatically. A warning is issued to prompt the user to update mk.conf to use
2058 the options framework directly. Support for the legacy variables will be
2061 Chapter 6. Creating binary packages
2065 6.1. Building a single binary package
2066 6.2. Settings for creation of binary packages
2068 6.1. Building a single binary package
2070 Once you have built and installed a package, you can create a binary package
2071 which can be installed on another system with pkg_add(1). This saves having to
2072 build the same package on a group of hosts and wasting CPU time. It also
2073 provides a simple means for others to install your package, should you
2076 To create a binary package, change into the appropriate directory in pkgsrc,
2077 and run make package:
2083 This will build and install your package (if not already done), and then build
2084 a binary package from what was installed. You can then use the pkg_* tools to
2085 manipulate it. Binary packages are created by default in /usr/pkgsrc/packages,
2086 in the form of a gzipped tar file. See Section B.2, "Packaging figlet" for a
2087 continuation of the above misc/figlet example.
2089 See Chapter 21, Submitting and Committing for information on how to submit such
2092 6.2. Settings for creation of binary packages
2094 See Section 17.17, "Other helpful targets".
2096 Chapter 7. Creating binary packages for everything in pkgsrc (bulk builds)
2100 7.1. Think first, build later
2101 7.2. Requirements of a bulk build
2102 7.3. Running an old-style bulk build
2104 7.3.1. Configuration
2105 7.3.2. Other environmental considerations
2108 7.3.5. Disk space requirements
2109 7.3.6. Setting up a sandbox for chrooted builds
2110 7.3.7. Building a partial set of packages
2111 7.3.8. Uploading results of a bulk build
2113 7.4. Running a pbulk-style bulk build
2116 7.4.2. Configuration
2118 7.5. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection
2120 7.5.1. Example of cdpack
2122 When you have multiple machines that should run the same packages, it is wasted
2123 time if they all build their packages themselves from source. There are two
2124 ways of getting a set of binary packages: The old bulk build system, or the new
2125 (as of 2007) parallel bulk build (pbulk) system. This chapter describes how to
2126 set them up so that the packages are most likely to be usable later.
2128 7.1. Think first, build later
2130 Since a bulk build takes several days or even weeks to finish, you should think
2131 about the setup before you start everything. Pay attention to at least the
2134 * If you want to upload the binary packages to ftp.NetBSD.org, make sure the
2135 setup complies to the requirements for binary packages:
2137 o To end up on ftp.NetBSD.org, the packages must be built by a NetBSD
2138 developer on a trusted machine (that is, where you and only you have
2141 o Packages on ftp.NetBSD.org should only be created from the stable
2142 branches (like 2009Q1), so that users browsing the available
2143 collections can see at a glance how old the packages are.
2145 o The packages must be built as root, since some packages require set-uid
2146 binaries at runtime, and creating those packages as unprivileged user
2147 doesn't work well at the moment.
2149 * Make sure that the bulk build cannot break anything in your system. Most
2150 bulk builds run as root, so they should be run at least in a chroot
2151 environment or something even more restrictive, depending on what the
2152 operating system provides. There have been numerous cases where certain
2153 packages tried to install files outside the LOCALBASE or wanted to edit
2154 some files in /etc. Furthermore, the bulk builds install and deinstall
2155 packages in /usr/pkg (or whatever LOCALBASE is) during their operation, so
2156 be sure that you don't need any package during the build.
2158 7.2. Requirements of a bulk build
2160 A complete bulk build requires lots of disk space. Some of the disk space can
2161 be read-only, some other must be writable. Some can be on remote filesystems
2162 (such as NFS) and some should be local. Some can be temporary filesystems,
2163 others must survive a sudden reboot.
2165 * 10 GB for the distfiles (read-write, remote, temporary)
2167 * 10 GB for the binary packages (read-write, remote, permanent)
2169 * 400 MB for the pkgsrc tree (read-only, remote, permanent)
2171 * 5 GB for LOCALBASE (read-write, local, temporary for pbulk, permanent for
2174 * 5 GB for the log files (read-write, remote, permanent)
2176 * 5 GB for temporary files (read-write, local, temporary)
2178 7.3. Running an old-style bulk build
2182 There are two ways of doing a bulk build. The old-style one and the new-style "
2183 pbulk". The latter is the recommended way.
2185 7.3.1. Configuration
2189 The build.conf file is the main configuration file for bulk builds. You can
2190 configure how your copy of pkgsrc is kept up to date, how the distfiles are
2191 downloaded, how the packages are built and how the report is generated. You can
2192 find an annotated example file in pkgsrc/mk/bulk/build.conf-example. To use it,
2193 copy build.conf-example to build.conf and edit it, following the comments in
2198 You may want to set variables in mk.conf. Look at pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf
2199 for details of the default settings. You will want to ensure that
2200 ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES meet your local policy. As used in this example,
2201 SKIP_LICENSE_CHECK=yes completely bypasses the license check.
2203 PACKAGES?= ${_PKGSRCDIR}/packages/${MACHINE_ARCH}
2204 WRKOBJDIR?= /usr/tmp/pkgsrc # build here instead of in pkgsrc
2206 BSDXSRCDIR= /usr/xsrc # for x11/xservers
2207 OBJHOSTNAME?= yes # use work.`hostname`
2208 FAILOVER_FETCH= yes # insist on the correct checksum
2210 SKIP_LICENSE_CHECK= yes
2212 Some options that are especially useful for bulk builds can be found at the top
2213 lines of the file mk/bulk/bsd.bulk-pkg.mk. The most useful options of these are
2214 briefly described here.
2216 * If you are on a slow machine, you may want to set USE_BULK_BROKEN_CHECK to
2219 * If you are doing bulk builds from a read-only copy of pkgsrc, you have to
2220 set BULKFILESDIR to the directory where all log files are created.
2221 Otherwise the log files are created in the pkgsrc directory.
2223 * Another important variable is BULK_PREREQ, which is a list of packages that
2224 should be always available while building other packages.
2226 Some other options are scattered in the pkgsrc infrastructure:
2228 * ALLOW_VULNERABLE_PACKAGES should be set to yes. The purpose of the bulk
2229 builds is creating binary packages, no matter if they are vulnerable or
2230 not. Leaving this variable unset would prevent the bulk build system from
2231 even trying to build them, so possible building errors would not show up.
2233 * CHECK_FILES (pkgsrc/mk/check/check-files.mk) can be set to "yes" to check
2234 that the installed set of files matches the PLIST.
2236 * CHECK_INTERPRETER (pkgsrc/mk/check/check-interpreter.mk) can be set to "yes
2237 " to check that the installed "#!"-scripts will find their interpreter.
2239 * PKGSRC_RUN_TEST can be set to "yes" to run each package's self-test before
2240 installing it. Note that some packages make heavy use of "good" random
2241 numbers, so you need to assure that the machine on which you are doing the
2242 bulk builds is not completely idle. Otherwise some test programs will seem
2243 to hang, while they are just waiting for new random data to be available.
2245 7.3.1.3. pre-build.local
2247 It is possible to configure the bulk build to perform certain site-specific
2248 tasks at the end of the pre-build stage. If the file pre-build.local exists in
2249 /usr/pkgsrc/mk/bulk, it will be executed (as a sh(1) script) at the end of the
2250 usual pre-build stage. An example use of pre-build.local is to have the line:
2252 echo "I do not have enough disk space to build this pig." \
2253 > misc/openoffice/$BROKENF
2255 to prevent the system from trying to build a particular package which requires
2256 nearly 3 GB of disk space.
2258 7.3.2. Other environmental considerations
2260 As /usr/pkg will be completely deleted at the start of bulk builds, make sure
2261 your login shell is placed somewhere else. Either drop it into /usr/local/bin
2262 (and adjust your login shell in the passwd file), or (re-)install it via
2263 pkg_add(1) from /etc/rc.local, so you can login after a reboot (remember that
2264 your current process won't die if the package is removed, you just can't start
2265 any new instances of the shell any more). Also, if you use NetBSD earlier than
2266 1.5, or you still want to use the pkgsrc version of ssh for some reason, be
2267 sure to install ssh before starting it from rc.local:
2269 (cd /usr/pkgsrc/security/ssh && make bulk-install)
2270 if [ -f /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/sshd ]; then
2271 /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/sshd
2274 Not doing so will result in you being not able to log in via ssh after the bulk
2275 build is finished or if the machine gets rebooted or crashes. You have been
2280 Make sure you don't need any of the packages still installed.
2284 During the bulk build, all packages, their configuration files and some more
2285 files from /var, /home and possibly other locations will be removed! So don't
2286 run a bulk build with privileges that might harm your system.
2288 Be sure to remove all other things that might interfere with builds, like some
2289 libs installed in /usr/local, etc. then become root and type:
2295 If for some reason your last build didn't complete (power failure, system
2296 panic, ...), you can continue it by running:
2298 # sh mk/bulk/build restart
2300 At the end of the bulk build, you will get a summary via mail, and find build
2301 logs in the directory specified by FTP in the build.conf file.
2305 The bulk builds consist of three steps:
2309 The script updates your pkgsrc tree via (anon)cvs, then cleans out any
2310 broken distfiles, and removes all packages installed.
2314 This is basically "make bulk-package" with an optimised order in which
2315 packages will be built. Packages that don't require other packages will be
2316 built first, and packages with many dependencies will be built later.
2320 Generates a report that's placed in the directory specified in the
2321 build.conf file named broken.html, a short version of that report will also
2322 be mailed to the build's admin.
2324 During the build, a list of broken packages will be compiled in /usr/pkgsrc
2325 /.broken (or .../.broken.${MACHINE} if OBJMACHINE is set), individual build
2326 logs of broken builds can be found in the package's directory. These files are
2327 used by the bulk-targets to mark broken builds to not waste time trying to
2328 rebuild them, and they can be used to debug these broken package builds later.
2330 7.3.5. Disk space requirements
2332 Currently, roughly the following requirements are valid for NetBSD 2.0/i386:
2334 * 10 GB - distfiles (NFS ok)
2336 * 8 GB - full set of all binaries (NFS ok)
2338 * 5 GB - temp space for compiling (local disk recommended)
2340 Note that all pkgs will be de-installed as soon as they are turned into a
2341 binary package, and that sources are removed, so there is no excessively huge
2342 demand to disk space. Afterwards, if the package is needed again, it will be
2343 installed via pkg_add(1) instead of building again, so there are no cycles
2344 wasted by recompiling.
2346 7.3.6. Setting up a sandbox for chrooted builds
2348 If you don't want all the packages nuked from a machine (rendering it useless
2349 for anything but pkg compiling), there is the possibility of doing the package
2350 bulk build inside a chroot environment.
2352 The first step is to set up a chroot sandbox, e.g. /usr/sandbox. This can be
2353 done by using null mounts, or manually.
2355 There is a shell script called pkgsrc/mk/bulk/mksandbox which will set up the
2356 sandbox environment using null mounts. It will also create a script called
2357 sandbox in the root of the sandbox environment, which will allow the null
2358 mounts to be activated using the sandbox mount command and deactivated using
2359 the sandbox umount command.
2361 To set up a sandbox environment by hand, after extracting all the sets from a
2362 NetBSD installation or doing a make distribution DESTDIR=/usr/sandbox in /usr/
2363 src/etc, be sure the following items are present and properly configured:
2367 # cp /netbsd /usr/sandbox
2371 # cd /usr/sandbox/dev ; sh MAKEDEV all
2373 3. /etc/resolv.conf (for security/smtpd and mail):
2375 # cp /etc/resolv.conf /usr/sandbox/etc
2377 4. Working(!) mail config (hostname, sendmail.cf):
2379 # cp /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /usr/sandbox/etc/mail
2381 5. /etc/localtime (for security/smtpd):
2383 # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /usr/sandbox/etc/localtime
2385 6. /usr/src (system sources, e. g. for sysutils/aperture):
2387 # ln -s ../disk1/cvs .
2388 # ln -s cvs/src-2.0 src
2390 7. Create /var/db/pkg (not part of default install):
2392 # mkdir /usr/sandbox/var/db/pkg
2394 8. Create /usr/pkg (not part of default install):
2396 # mkdir /usr/sandbox/usr/pkg
2398 9. Checkout pkgsrc via cvs into /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc:
2400 # cd /usr/sandbox/usr
2401 # cvs -d anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot checkout -d -P pkgsrc
2404 Do not mount/link this to the copy of your pkgsrc tree you do development
2405 in, as this will likely cause problems!
2407 10. Make /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc/packages and .../distfiles point somewhere
2408 appropriate. NFS- and/or nullfs-mounts may come in handy!
2410 11. Edit mk.conf, see Section 7.3.1.2, "mk.conf".
2412 12. Adjust mk/bulk/build.conf to suit your needs.
2414 When the chroot sandbox is set up, you can start the build with the following
2417 # cd /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc
2418 # sh mk/bulk/do-sandbox-build
2421 This will just jump inside the sandbox and start building. At the end of the
2422 build, mail will be sent with the results of the build. Created binary pkgs
2423 will be in /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc/packages (wherever that points/mounts to/
2426 7.3.7. Building a partial set of packages
2428 In addition to building a complete set of all packages in pkgsrc, the pkgsrc/mk
2429 /bulk/build script may be used to build a subset of the packages contained in
2430 pkgsrc. By setting SPECIFIC_PKGS in mk.conf, the variables
2432 * SITE_SPECIFIC_PKGS
2434 * HOST_SPECIFIC_PKGS
2436 * GROUP_SPECIFIC_PKGS
2438 * USER_SPECIFIC_PKGS
2440 will define the set of packages which should be built. The bulk build code will
2441 also include any packages which are needed as dependencies for the explicitly
2444 One use of this is to do a bulk build with SPECIFIC_PKGS in a chroot sandbox
2445 periodically to have a complete set of the binary packages needed for your site
2446 available without the overhead of building extra packages that are not needed.
2448 7.3.8. Uploading results of a bulk build
2450 This section describes how pkgsrc developers can upload binary pkgs built by
2451 bulk builds to ftp.NetBSD.org.
2453 If you would like to automatically create checksum files for the binary
2454 packages you intend to upload, remember to set MKSUMS=yes in your mk/bulk/
2457 If you would like to PGP sign the checksum files (highly recommended!),
2458 remember to set SIGN_AS=username@NetBSD.org in your mk/bulk/build.conf. This
2459 will prompt you for your GPG password to sign the files before uploading
2462 Then, make sure that you have RSYNC_DST set properly in your mk/bulk/build.conf
2463 file, i.e. adjust it to something like one of the following:
2465 RSYNC_DST=ftp.NetBSD.org:/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/arch/a.b.c-20xxQy/upload
2467 Please use appropriate values for "20xxQy" (the branch), "a.b.c" (the OS
2468 version) and "arch" here. If your login on ftp.NetBSD.org is different from
2469 your local login, write your login directly into the variable, e.g. my local
2470 account is "feyrer", but for my login "hubertf", I use:
2472 RSYNC_DST=hubertf@ftp.NetBSD.org:/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/arch/a.b.c-20xxQy/upload
2474 A separate upload directory is used here to allow "closing" the directory
2475 during upload. To do so, run the following command on ftp.NetBSD.org next:
2477 nbftp% mkdir -p -m 750 /pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/arch/a.b.c-20xxQy/upload
2479 Before uploading the binary pkgs, ssh authentication needs to be set up. This
2480 example shows how to set up temporary keys for the root account inside the
2481 sandbox (assuming that no keys should be present there usually):
2483 # chroot /usr/sandbox
2484 chroot-# rm $HOME/.ssh/id-dsa*
2485 chroot-# ssh-keygen -t rsa
2486 chroot-# cat $HOME/.ssh/id-rsa.pub
2489 Now take the output of id-rsa.pub and append it to your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
2490 file on ftp.NetBSD.org. You should remove the key after the upload is done!
2492 Next, test if your ssh connection really works:
2494 chroot-# ssh ftp.NetBSD.org date
2496 Use "-l yourNetBSDlogin" here as appropriate!
2498 Now after all this works, you can exit the sandbox and start the upload:
2501 # cd /usr/sandbox/usr/pkgsrc
2502 # sh mk/bulk/do-sandbox-upload
2505 The upload process may take quite some time. Use ls(1) or du(1) on the FTP
2506 server to monitor progress of the upload. The upload script will take care of
2507 not uploading restricted packages.
2509 After the upload has ended, first thing is to revoke ssh access:
2511 nbftp% vi ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
2514 Use whatever is needed to remove the key you've entered before! Last, move the
2515 uploaded packages out of the upload directory to have them accessible to
2518 nbftp% cd /pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/arch/a.b.c-20xxQy
2519 nbftp% mv upload/* .
2521 nbftp% chgrp -R netbsd .
2522 nbftp% find . -type d | xargs chmod 775
2525 7.4. Running a pbulk-style bulk build
2527 Running a pbulk-style bulk build works roughly as follows:
2529 * First, build the pbulk infrastructure in a fresh pkgsrc location.
2531 * Then, build each of the packages from a clean installation directory using
2536 First, you need to create a pkgsrc installation for the pbulk infrastructure.
2537 No matter on which platform you are (even on NetBSD), you should bootstrap into
2538 its own directory. Let's take the directory /usr/pbulk or $HOME/pbulk for it.
2539 This installation will be bootstrapped and all the tools that are required for
2540 the bulk build will be installed there.
2543 $ ./bootstrap/bootstrap --prefix=/usr/pbulk --varbase=/usr/pbulk/var --workdir=/tmp/pbulk-bootstrap
2544 $ rm -rf /tmp/pbulk-bootstrap
2546 Now the basic environment for the pbulk infrastructure is installed. The
2547 specific tools are still missing. This is a good time to edit the pkgsrc
2548 configuration file /usr/pbulk/etc/mk.conf to fit your needs. Typical things you
2551 * PKG_DEVELOPER=yes, to enable many consistency checks,
2553 * WRKOBJDIR=/tmp/pbulk-outer, to keep /usr/pkgsrc free from any
2556 * DISTDIR=/distfiles, to have only one directory in which all distfiles (for
2557 the infrastructure and for the actual packages) are downloaded,
2559 * ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES+=..., to select some licenses additional to the usual
2560 Free/Open Source licenses that are acceptable to you,
2562 * SKIP_LICENSE_CHECK=yes, to bypass the license checks.
2564 Now you are ready to build the rest of the pbulk infrastructure.
2567 $ /usr/pbulk/bin/bmake install
2568 $ rm -rf /tmp/pbulk-outer
2570 Now the pbulk infrastructure is built and installed. It still needs to be
2571 configured, and after some more preparation, we will be able to start the real
2574 7.4.2. Configuration
2576 TODO; see pkgsrc/doc/HOWTO-pbulk for more information.
2578 TODO: continue writing
2580 7.5. Creating a multiple CD-ROM packages collection
2582 After your pkgsrc bulk-build has completed, you may wish to create a CD-ROM set
2583 of the resulting binary packages to assist in installing packages on other
2584 machines. The pkgtools/cdpack package provides a simple tool for creating the
2585 ISO 9660 images. cdpack arranges the packages on the CD-ROMs in a way that
2586 keeps all the dependencies for a given package on the same CD as that package.
2588 7.5.1. Example of cdpack
2590 Complete documentation for cdpack is found in the cdpack(1) man page. The
2591 following short example assumes that the binary packages are left in /usr/
2592 pkgsrc/packages/All and that sufficient disk space exists in /u2 to hold the
2596 # pkg_add /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All/cdpack
2597 # cdpack /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All /u2/images
2600 If you wish to include a common set of files (COPYRIGHT, README, etc.) on each
2601 CD in the collection, then you need to create a directory which contains these
2605 # echo "This is a README" > /tmp/common/README
2606 # echo "Another file" > /tmp/common/COPYING
2607 # mkdir /tmp/common/bin
2608 # echo "#!/bin/sh" > /tmp/common/bin/myscript
2609 # echo "echo Hello world" >> /tmp/common/bin/myscript
2610 # chmod 755 /tmp/common/bin/myscript
2613 Now create the images:
2615 # cdpack -x /tmp/common /usr/pkgsrc/packages/All /u2/images
2617 Each image will contain README, COPYING, and bin/myscript in their root
2620 Chapter 8. Directory layout of the installed files
2624 8.1. File system layout in ${LOCALBASE}
2625 8.2. File system layout in ${VARBASE}
2627 The files that are installed by pkgsrc are organized in a way that is similar
2628 to what you find in the /usr directory of the base system. But some details are
2629 different. This is because pkgsrc initially came from FreeBSD and had adopted
2630 its file system hierarchy. Later it was largely influenced by NetBSD. But no
2631 matter which operating system you are using pkgsrc with, you can expect the
2632 same layout for pkgsrc.
2634 There are mainly four root directories for pkgsrc, which are all configurable
2635 in the bootstrap/bootstrap script. When pkgsrc has been installed as root, the
2636 default locations are:
2639 PKG_SYSCONFBASE= /usr/pkg/etc
2641 PKG_DBDIR= /var/db/pkg
2643 In unprivileged mode (when pkgsrc has been installed as any other user), the
2644 default locations are:
2646 LOCALBASE= ${HOME}/pkg
2647 PKG_SYSCONFBASE= ${HOME}/pkg/etc
2648 VARBASE= ${HOME}/pkg/var
2649 PKG_DBDIR= ${HOME}/pkg/var/db/pkg
2651 What these four directories are for, and what they look like is explained
2654 * LOCALBASE corresponds to the /usr directory in the base system. It is the "
2655 main" directory where the files are installed and contains the well-known
2656 subdirectories like bin, include, lib, share and sbin.
2658 * VARBASE corresponds to /var in the base system. Some programs (especially
2659 games, network daemons) need write access to it during normal operation.
2661 * PKG_SYSCONFDIR corresponds to /etc in the base system. It contains
2662 configuration files of the packages, as well as pkgsrc's mk.conf itself.
2664 8.1. File system layout in ${LOCALBASE}
2666 The following directories exist in a typical pkgsrc installation in $
2671 Contains executable programs that are intended to be directly used by the
2676 Contains files for the emulation layers of various other operating systems,
2677 especially for NetBSD.
2679 etc (the usual location of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR})
2681 Contains the configuration files.
2685 Contains headers for the C and C++ programming languages.
2689 Contains GNU info files of various packages.
2693 Contains shared and static libraries.
2697 Contains data files that don't change after installation. Other data files
2698 belong into ${VARBASE}.
2702 Contains programs that are not intended to be used by end users, such as
2703 helper programs or network daemons.
2707 Contains programs that are intended to be executed as CGI scripts by a web
2710 man (the usual value of ${PKGMANDIR})
2712 Contains brief documentation in form of manual pages.
2716 Contains programs that are intended to be used only by the super-user.
2720 Contains platform-independent data files that don't change after
2725 Contains documentation files provided by the packages.
2729 Contains example files provided by the packages. Among others, the original
2730 configuration files are saved here and copied to ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR} during
2735 Contains the original files for rc.d scripts.
2737 var (the usual location of ${VARBASE})
2739 Contains files that may be modified after installation.
2741 8.2. File system layout in ${VARBASE}
2743 db/pkg (the usual location of ${PKG_DBDIR})
2745 Contains information about the currently installed packages.
2749 Contains highscore files.
2757 Contains informational files about daemons that are currently running.
2759 Chapter 9. Frequently Asked Questions
2763 9.1. Are there any mailing lists for pkg-related discussion?
2764 9.2. Where's the pkgviews documentation?
2765 9.3. Utilities for package management (pkgtools)
2766 9.4. How to use pkgsrc as non-root
2767 9.5. How to resume transfers when fetching distfiles?
2768 9.6. How can I install/use modular X.org from pkgsrc?
2769 9.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
2770 9.8. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
2771 9.9. How to fetch all distfiles at once
2772 9.10. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?
2773 9.11. What does "Could not find bsd.own.mk" mean?
2774 9.12. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
2775 9.13. How do I change the location of configuration files?
2776 9.14. Automated security checks
2777 9.15. Why do some packages ignore my CFLAGS?
2778 9.16. A package does not build. What shall I do?
2779 9.17. What does "Makefile appears to contain unresolved cvs/rcs/??? merge
2782 This section contains hints, tips & tricks on special things in pkgsrc that we
2783 didn't find a better place for in the previous chapters, and it contains items
2784 for both pkgsrc users and developers.
2786 9.1. Are there any mailing lists for pkg-related discussion?
2788 The following mailing lists may be of interest to pkgsrc users:
2790 * pkgsrc-users: This is a general purpose list for most issues regarding
2791 pkgsrc, regardless of platform, e.g. soliciting user help for pkgsrc
2792 configuration, unexpected build failures, using particular packages,
2793 upgrading pkgsrc installations, questions regarding the pkgsrc release
2794 branches, etc. General announcements or proposals for changes that impact
2795 the pkgsrc user community, e.g. major infrastructure changes, new features,
2796 package removals, etc., may also be posted.
2798 * pkgsrc-bulk: A list where the results of pkgsrc bulk builds are sent and
2801 * pkgsrc-changes: This list is for those who are interested in getting a
2802 commit message for every change committed to pkgsrc. It is also available
2803 in digest form, meaning one daily message containing all commit messages
2804 for changes to the package source tree in that 24 hour period.
2808 % echo subscribe listname | mail majordomo@NetBSD.org
2810 Archives for all these mailing lists are available from http://
2811 mail-index.NetBSD.org/.
2813 9.2. Where's the pkgviews documentation?
2815 Pkgviews is tightly integrated with buildlink. You can find a pkgviews User's
2816 guide in pkgsrc/mk/buildlink3/PKGVIEWS_UG.
2818 9.3. Utilities for package management (pkgtools)
2820 The directory pkgsrc/pkgtools contains a number of useful utilities for both
2821 users and developers of pkgsrc. This section attempts only to make the reader
2822 aware of the utilities and when they might be useful, and not to duplicate the
2823 documentation that comes with each package.
2825 Utilities used by pkgsrc (automatically installed when needed):
2827 * pkgtools/x11-links: Symlinks for use by buildlink.
2829 OS tool augmentation (automatically installed when needed):
2831 * pkgtools/digest: Calculates various kinds of checksums (including SHA1).
2833 * pkgtools/libnbcompat: Compatibility library for pkgsrc tools.
2835 * pkgtools/mtree: Installed on non-BSD systems due to lack of native mtree.
2837 * pkgtools/pkg_install: Up-to-date replacement for /usr/sbin/pkg_install, or
2838 for use on operating systems where pkg_install is not present.
2840 Utilities used by pkgsrc (not automatically installed):
2842 * pkgtools/pkg_tarup: Create a binary package from an already-installed
2843 package. Used by make replace to save the old package.
2845 * pkgtools/dfdisk: Adds extra functionality to pkgsrc, allowing it to fetch
2846 distfiles from multiple locations. It currently supports the following
2847 methods: multiple CD-ROMs and network FTP/HTTP connections.
2849 * pkgtools/xpkgwedge: Put X11 packages someplace else (enabled by default).
2851 * devel/cpuflags: Determine the best compiler flags to optimise code for your
2852 current CPU and compiler.
2854 Utilities for keeping track of installed packages, being up to date, etc:
2856 * pkgtools/pkg_chk: Reports on packages whose installed versions do not match
2857 the latest pkgsrc entries.
2859 * pkgtools/pkgdep: Makes dependency graphs of packages, to aid in choosing a
2860 strategy for updating.
2862 * pkgtools/pkgdepgraph: Makes graphs from the output of pkgtools/pkgdep (uses
2865 * pkgtools/pkglint: The pkglint(1) program checks a pkgsrc entry for errors.
2867 * pkgtools/lintpkgsrc: The lintpkgsrc(1) program does various checks on the
2868 complete pkgsrc system.
2870 * pkgtools/pkgsurvey: Report what packages you have installed.
2872 Utilities for people maintaining or creating individual packages:
2874 * pkgtools/pkgdiff: Automate making and maintaining patches for a package
2875 (includes pkgdiff, pkgvi, mkpatches, etc.).
2877 * pkgtools/rpm2pkg, pkgtools/url2pkg: Aids in converting to pkgsrc.
2879 * pkgtools/gensolpkg: Convert pkgsrc to a Solaris package.
2881 Utilities for people maintaining pkgsrc (or: more obscure pkg utilities)
2883 * pkgtools/pkg_comp: Build packages in a chrooted area.
2885 * pkgtools/libkver: Spoof kernel version for chrooted cross builds.
2887 9.4. How to use pkgsrc as non-root
2889 If you want to use pkgsrc as non-root user, you can set some variables to make
2890 pkgsrc work under these conditions. At the very least, you need to set
2891 UNPRIVILEGED to "yes"; this will turn on unprivileged mode and set multiple
2892 related variables to allow installation of packages as non-root.
2894 In case the defaults are not enough, you may want to tune some other variables
2895 used. For example, if the automatic user/group detection leads to incorrect
2896 values (or not the ones you would like to use), you can change them by setting
2897 UNPRIVILEGED_USER and UNPRIVILEGED_GROUP respectively.
2899 As regards bootstrapping, please note that the bootstrap script will ease
2900 non-root configuration when given the "--ignore-user-check" flag, as it will
2901 choose and use multiple default directories under ~/pkg as the installation
2902 targets. These directories can be overridden by the "--prefix" flag provided by
2903 the script, as well as some others that allow finer tuning of the tree layout.
2905 9.5. How to resume transfers when fetching distfiles?
2907 By default, resuming transfers in pkgsrc is disabled, but you can enable this
2908 feature by adding the option PKG_RESUME_TRANSFERS=YES into mk.conf. If, during
2909 a fetch step, an incomplete distfile is found, pkgsrc will try to resume it.
2911 You can also use a different program than the default ftp(1) by changing the
2912 FETCH_USING variable. You can specify the program by using of ftp, fetch, wget
2913 or curl. Alternatively, fetching can be disabled by using the value manual. A
2914 value of custom disables the system defaults and dependency tracking for the
2915 fetch program. In that case you have to provide FETCH_CMD, FETCH_BEFORE_ARGS,
2916 FETCH_RESUME_ARGS, FETCH_OUTPUT_ARGS, FETCH_AFTER_ARGS.
2918 For example, if you want to use wget to download, you'll have to use something
2923 9.6. How can I install/use modular X.org from pkgsrc?
2925 If you want to use modular X.org from pkgsrc instead of your system's own X11
2926 (/usr/X11R6, /usr/openwin, ...) you will have to add the following line into
2933 The DragonFly operating system defaults to using modular X.org from pkgsrc.
2935 9.7. How to fetch files from behind a firewall
2937 If you are sitting behind a firewall which does not allow direct connections to
2938 Internet hosts (i.e. non-NAT), you may specify the relevant proxy hosts. This
2939 is done using an environment variable in the form of a URL, e.g. in Amdahl, the
2940 machine "orpheus.amdahl.com" is one of the firewalls, and it uses port 80 as
2941 the proxy port number. So the proxy environment variables are:
2943 ftp_proxy=ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/
2944 http_proxy=http://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/
2946 9.8. How do I tell make fetch to do passive FTP?
2948 This depends on which utility is used to retrieve distfiles. From bsd.pkg.mk,
2949 FETCH_CMD is assigned the first available command from the following list:
2951 * ${LOCALBASE}/bin/ftp
2955 On a default NetBSD installation, this will be /usr/bin/ftp, which
2956 automatically tries passive connections first, and falls back to active
2957 connections if the server refuses to do passive. For the other tools, add the
2958 following to your mk.conf file: PASSIVE_FETCH=1.
2960 Having that option present will prevent /usr/bin/ftp from falling back to
2963 9.9. How to fetch all distfiles at once
2965 You would like to download all the distfiles in a single batch from work or
2966 university, where you can't run a make fetch. There is an archive of distfiles
2967 on ftp.NetBSD.org, but downloading the entire directory may not be appropriate.
2969 The answer here is to do a make fetch-list in /usr/pkgsrc or one of its
2970 subdirectories, carry the resulting list to your machine at work/school and use
2971 it there. If you don't have a NetBSD-compatible ftp(1) (like tnftp) at work,
2972 don't forget to set FETCH_CMD to something that fetches a URL:
2977 % make fetch-list FETCH_CMD=wget DISTDIR=/tmp/distfiles >/tmp/fetch.sh
2978 % scp /tmp/fetch.sh work:/tmp
2984 then tar up /tmp/distfiles and take it home.
2986 If you have a machine running NetBSD, and you want to get all distfiles (even
2987 ones that aren't for your machine architecture), you can do so by using the
2988 above-mentioned make fetch-list approach, or fetch the distfiles directly by
2991 % make mirror-distfiles
2993 If you even decide to ignore NO_{SRC,BIN}_ON_{FTP,CDROM}, then you can get
2994 everything by running:
2996 % make fetch NO_SKIP=yes
2998 9.10. What does "Don't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc" mean?
3000 When compiling the pkgtools/pkg_install package, you get the error from make
3001 that it doesn't know how to make /usr/share/tmac/tmac.andoc? This indicates
3002 that you don't have installed the "text" set (nroff, ...) from the NetBSD base
3003 distribution on your machine. It is recommended to do that to format man pages.
3005 In the case of the pkgtools/pkg_install package, you can get away with setting
3006 NOMAN=YES either in the environment or in mk.conf.
3008 9.11. What does "Could not find bsd.own.mk" mean?
3010 You didn't install the compiler set, comp.tgz, when you installed your NetBSD
3011 machine. Please get and install it, by extracting it in /:
3014 # tar --unlink -zxvpf .../comp.tgz
3016 comp.tgz is part of every NetBSD release. Get the one that corresponds to your
3017 release (determine via uname -r).
3019 9.12. Using 'sudo' with pkgsrc
3021 When installing packages as non-root user and using the just-in-time su(1)
3022 feature of pkgsrc, it can become annoying to type in the root password for each
3023 required package installed. To avoid this, the sudo package can be used, which
3024 does password caching over a limited time. To use it, install sudo (either as
3025 binary package or from security/sudo) and then put the following into your
3026 mk.conf, somewhere after the definition of the LOCALBASE variable:
3028 .if exists(${LOCALBASE}/bin/sudo)
3029 SU_CMD= ${LOCALBASE}/bin/sudo /bin/sh -c
3032 9.13. How do I change the location of configuration files?
3034 As the system administrator, you can choose where configuration files are
3035 installed. The default settings make all these files go into ${PREFIX}/etc or
3036 some of its subdirectories; this may be suboptimal depending on your
3037 expectations (e.g., a read-only, NFS-exported PREFIX with a need of per-machine
3038 configuration of the provided packages).
3040 In order to change the defaults, you can modify the PKG_SYSCONFBASE variable
3041 (in mk.conf) to point to your preferred configuration directory; some common
3042 examples include /etc or /etc/pkg.
3044 Furthermore, you can change this value on a per-package basis by setting the
3045 PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR} variable. PKG_SYSCONFVAR's value usually
3046 matches the name of the package you would like to modify, that is, the contents
3049 Note that after changing these settings, you must rebuild and reinstall any
3052 9.14. Automated security checks
3054 Please be aware that there can often be bugs in third-party software, and some
3055 of these bugs can leave a machine vulnerable to exploitation by attackers. In
3056 an effort to lessen the exposure, the NetBSD packages team maintains a database
3057 of known-exploits to packages which have at one time been included in pkgsrc.
3058 The database can be downloaded automatically, and a security audit of all
3059 packages installed on a system can take place. To do this, refer to the
3060 following two tools (installed as part of the pkgtools/pkg_install package):
3062 1. pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities, an easy way to download a list of the
3063 security vulnerabilities information. This list is kept up to date by the
3064 pkgsrc security team, and is distributed from the NetBSD ftp server:
3066 ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pkgsrc/distfiles/pkg-vulnerabilities
3068 2. pkg_admin audit, an easy way to audit the current machine, checking each
3069 known vulnerability. If a vulnerable package is installed, it will be shown
3070 by output to stdout, including a description of the type of vulnerability,
3071 and a URL containing more information.
3073 Use of these tools is strongly recommended! After "pkg_install" is installed,
3074 please read the package's message, which you can get by running pkg_info -D
3077 If this package is installed, pkgsrc builds will use it to perform a security
3078 check before building any package. See Section 5.2, "Variables affecting the
3079 build process" for ways to control this check.
3081 9.15. Why do some packages ignore my CFLAGS?
3083 When you add your own preferences to the CFLAGS variable in your mk.conf, these
3084 flags are passed in environment variables to the ./configure scripts and to
3085 make(1). Some package authors ignore the CFLAGS from the environment variable
3086 by overriding them in the Makefiles of their package.
3088 Currently there is no solution to this problem. If you really need the package
3089 to use your CFLAGS you should run make patch in the package directory and then
3090 inspect any Makefile and Makefile.in for whether they define CFLAGS explicitly.
3091 Usually you can remove these lines. But be aware that some "smart" programmers
3092 write so bad code that it only works for the specific combination of CFLAGS
3095 9.16. A package does not build. What shall I do?
3097 1. Make sure that your copy of pkgsrc is consistent. A case that occurs often
3098 is that people only update pkgsrc in parts, because of performance reasons.
3099 Since pkgsrc is one large system, not a collection of many small systems,
3100 there are sometimes changes that only work when the whole pkgsrc tree is
3103 2. Make sure that you don't have any CVS conflicts. Search for "<<<<<<" or "
3104 >>>>>>" in all your pkgsrc files.
3106 3. Make sure that you don't have old copies of the packages extracted. Run
3107 make clean clean-depends to verify this.
3109 4. If the problem still exists, write a mail to the pkgsrc-users mailing list.
3111 9.17. What does "Makefile appears to contain unresolved cvs/rcs/??? merge
3114 You have modified a file from pkgsrc, and someone else has modified that same
3115 file afterwards in the CVS repository. Both changes are in the same region of
3116 the file, so when you updated pkgsrc, the cvs command marked the conflicting
3117 changes in the file. Because of these markers, the file is no longer a valid
3120 Have a look at that file, and if you don't need your local changes anymore, you
3121 can remove that file and run cvs -q update -dP in that directory to download
3122 the current version.
3124 Part II. The pkgsrc developer's guide
3126 This part of the book deals with creating and modifying packages. It starts
3127 with a "HOWTO"-like guide on creating a new package. The remaining chapters are
3128 more like a reference manual for pkgsrc.
3132 10. Creating a new pkgsrc package from scratch
3134 10.1. Common types of packages
3136 10.1.1. Perl modules
3137 10.1.2. KDE applications
3138 10.1.3. Python modules and programs
3142 10.2.1. How the www/nvu package came into pkgsrc
3144 11. Package components - files, directories and contents
3150 11.3.1. Structure of a single patch file
3151 11.3.2. Creating patch files
3152 11.3.3. Sources where the patch files come from
3153 11.3.4. Patching guidelines
3154 11.3.5. Feedback to the author
3156 11.4. Other mandatory files
3157 11.5. Optional files
3159 11.5.1. Files affecting the binary package
3160 11.5.2. Files affecting the build process
3161 11.5.3. Files affecting nothing at all
3166 12. Programming in Makefiles
3169 12.2. Makefile variables
3171 12.2.1. Naming conventions
3175 12.3.1. Adding things to a list
3176 12.3.2. Converting an internal list into an external list
3177 12.3.3. Passing variables to a shell command
3178 12.3.4. Quoting guideline
3179 12.3.5. Workaround for a bug in BSD Make
3184 13.2. Semi-automatic PLIST generation
3185 13.3. Tweaking output of make print-PLIST
3186 13.4. Variable substitution in PLIST
3187 13.5. Man page compression
3188 13.6. Changing PLIST source with PLIST_SRC
3189 13.7. Platform-specific and differing PLISTs
3190 13.8. Sharing directories between packages
3192 14. Buildlink methodology
3194 14.1. Converting packages to use buildlink3
3195 14.2. Writing buildlink3.mk files
3197 14.2.1. Anatomy of a buildlink3.mk file
3198 14.2.2. Updating BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg and BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.
3199 pkg in buildlink3.mk files
3201 14.3. Writing builtin.mk files
3203 14.3.1. Anatomy of a builtin.mk file
3204 14.3.2. Global preferences for native or pkgsrc software
3206 15. The pkginstall framework
3208 15.1. Files and directories outside the installation prefix
3210 15.1.1. Directory manipulation
3211 15.1.2. File manipulation
3213 15.2. Configuration files
3215 15.2.1. How PKG_SYSCONFDIR is set
3216 15.2.2. Telling the software where configuration files are
3217 15.2.3. Patching installations
3218 15.2.4. Disabling handling of configuration files
3220 15.3. System startup scripts
3222 15.3.1. Disabling handling of system startup scripts
3224 15.4. System users and groups
3227 15.5.1. Disabling shell registration
3231 15.6.1. Disabling automatic update of the fonts databases
3233 16. Options handling
3235 16.1. Global default options
3236 16.2. Converting packages to use bsd.options.mk
3238 16.4. Determining the options of dependencies
3240 17. The build process
3243 17.2. Program location
3244 17.3. Directories used during the build process
3245 17.4. Running a phase
3246 17.5. The fetch phase
3248 17.5.1. What to fetch and where to get it from
3249 17.5.2. How are the files fetched?
3251 17.6. The checksum phase
3252 17.7. The extract phase
3253 17.8. The patch phase
3254 17.9. The tools phase
3255 17.10. The wrapper phase
3256 17.11. The configure phase
3257 17.12. The build phase
3258 17.13. The test phase
3259 17.14. The install phase
3260 17.15. The package phase
3262 17.17. Other helpful targets
3264 18. Tools needed for building or running
3266 18.1. Tools for pkgsrc builds
3267 18.2. Tools needed by packages
3268 18.3. Tools provided by platforms
3269 18.4. Questions regarding the tools
3271 19. Making your package work
3273 19.1. General operation
3275 19.1.1. Portability of packages
3276 19.1.2. How to pull in user-settable variables from mk.conf
3277 19.1.3. User interaction
3278 19.1.4. Handling licenses
3279 19.1.5. Restricted packages
3280 19.1.6. Handling dependencies
3281 19.1.7. Handling conflicts with other packages
3282 19.1.8. Packages that cannot or should not be built
3283 19.1.9. Packages which should not be deleted, once installed
3284 19.1.10. Handling packages with security problems
3285 19.1.11. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing
3287 19.1.12. Substituting variable text in the package files (the SUBST
3290 19.2. Fixing problems in the fetch phase
3292 19.2.1. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading
3293 19.2.2. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
3295 19.3. Fixing problems in the configure phase
3297 19.3.1. Shared libraries - libtool
3298 19.3.2. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
3299 19.3.3. GNU Autoconf/Automake
3301 19.4. Programming languages
3303 19.4.1. C, C++, and Fortran
3305 19.4.3. Packages containing perl scripts
3306 19.4.4. Other programming languages
3308 19.5. Fixing problems in the build phase
3310 19.5.1. Compiling C and C++ code conditionally
3311 19.5.2. How to handle compiler bugs
3312 19.5.3. Undefined reference to "..."
3313 19.5.4. Running out of memory
3315 19.6. Fixing problems in the install phase
3317 19.6.1. Creating needed directories
3318 19.6.2. Where to install documentation
3319 19.6.3. Installing highscore files
3320 19.6.4. Adding DESTDIR support to packages
3321 19.6.5. Packages with hardcoded paths to other interpreters
3322 19.6.6. Packages installing perl modules
3323 19.6.7. Packages installing info files
3324 19.6.8. Packages installing man pages
3325 19.6.9. Packages installing GConf data files
3326 19.6.10. Packages installing scrollkeeper/rarian data files
3327 19.6.11. Packages installing X11 fonts
3328 19.6.12. Packages installing GTK2 modules
3329 19.6.13. Packages installing SGML or XML data
3330 19.6.14. Packages installing extensions to the MIME database
3331 19.6.15. Packages using intltool
3332 19.6.16. Packages installing startup scripts
3333 19.6.17. Packages installing TeX modules
3334 19.6.18. Packages supporting running binaries in emulation
3335 19.6.19. Packages installing hicolor theme icons
3336 19.6.20. Packages installing desktop files
3338 19.7. Marking packages as having problems
3341 21. Submitting and Committing
3343 21.1. Submitting binary packages
3344 21.2. Submitting source packages (for non-NetBSD-developers)
3345 21.3. General notes when adding, updating, or removing packages
3346 21.4. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
3347 21.5. Updating a package to a newer version
3348 21.6. Renaming a package in pkgsrc
3349 21.7. Moving a package in pkgsrc
3351 22. Frequently Asked Questions
3352 23. GNOME packaging and porting
3355 23.2. Packaging a GNOME application
3356 23.3. Updating GNOME to a newer version
3357 23.4. Patching guidelines
3359 Chapter 10. Creating a new pkgsrc package from scratch
3363 10.1. Common types of packages
3365 10.1.1. Perl modules
3366 10.1.2. KDE applications
3367 10.1.3. Python modules and programs
3371 10.2.1. How the www/nvu package came into pkgsrc
3373 When you find a package that is not yet in pkgsrc, you most likely have a URL
3374 from where you can download the source code. Starting with this URL, creating a
3375 package involves only a few steps.
3377 1. First, install the packages pkgtools/url2pkg and pkgtools/pkglint.
3379 2. Then, choose one of the top-level directories as the category in which you
3380 want to place your package. You can also create a directory of your own
3381 (maybe called local). In that category directory, create another directory
3382 for your package and change into it.
3384 3. Run the program url2pkg, which will ask you for a URL. Enter the URL of the
3385 distribution file (in most cases a .tar.gz file) and watch how the basic
3386 ingredients of your package are created automatically. The distribution
3387 file is extracted automatically to fill in some details in the Makefile
3388 that would otherwise have to be done manually.
3390 4. Examine the extracted files to determine the dependencies of your package.
3391 Ideally, this is mentioned in some README file, but things may differ. For
3392 each of these dependencies, look where it exists in pkgsrc, and if there is
3393 a file called buildlink3.mk in that directory, add a line to your package
3394 Makefile which includes that file just before the last line. If the
3395 buildlink3.mk file does not exist, it must be created first. The
3396 buildlink3.mk file makes sure that the package's include files and
3397 libraries are provided.
3399 If you just need binaries from a package, add a DEPENDS line to the
3400 Makefile, which specifies the version of the dependency and where it can be
3401 found in pkgsrc. This line should be placed in the third paragraph. If the
3402 dependency is only needed for building the package, but not when using it,
3403 use BUILD_DEPENDS instead of DEPENDS. Your package may then look like this:
3407 BUILD_DEPENDS+= lua>=5.0:../../lang/lua
3408 DEPENDS+= screen-[0-9]*:../../misc/screen
3409 DEPENDS+= screen>=4.0:../../misc/screen
3413 .include "../../category/package/buildlink3.mk"
3414 .include "../../devel/glib2/buildlink3.mk"
3415 .include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk"
3417 5. Run pkglint to see what things still need to be done to make your package a
3418 "good" one. If you don't know what pkglint's warnings want to tell you, try
3419 pkglint --explain or pkglint -e, which outputs additional explanations.
3421 6. In many cases the package is not yet ready to build. You can find
3422 instructions for the most common cases in the next section, Section 10.1,
3423 "Common types of packages". After you have followed the instructions over
3424 there, you can hopefully continue here.
3426 7. Run bmake clean to clean the working directory from the extracted files.
3427 Besides these files, a lot of cache files and other system information has
3428 been saved in the working directory, which may become wrong after you
3429 edited the Makefile.
3431 8. Now, run bmake to build the package. For the various things that can go
3432 wrong in this phase, consult Chapter 19, Making your package work.
3434 9. When the package builds fine, the next step is to install the package. Run
3435 bmake install and hope that everything works.
3437 10. Up to now, the file PLIST, which contains a list of the files that are
3438 installed by the package, is nearly empty. Run bmake print-PLIST >PLIST to
3439 generate a probably correct list. Check the file using your preferred text
3440 editor to see if the list of files looks plausible.
3442 11. Run pkglint again to see if the generated PLIST contains garbage or not.
3444 12. When you ran bmake install, the package has been registered in the database
3445 of installed files, but with an empty list of files. To fix this, run bmake
3446 deinstall and bmake install again. Now the package is registered with the
3447 list of files from PLIST.
3449 13. Run bmake package to create a binary package from the set of installed
3452 10.1. Common types of packages
3454 10.1.1. Perl modules
3456 Simple Perl modules are handled automatically by url2pkg, including
3459 10.1.2. KDE applications
3461 KDE applications should always include meta-pkgs/kde3/kde3.mk, which contains
3462 numerous settings that are typical of KDE packages.
3464 10.1.3. Python modules and programs
3466 Python modules and programs packages are easily created using a set of
3467 predefined variables.
3469 Most Python packages use either "distutils" or easy-setup ("eggs"). If the
3470 software uses "distutils", set the PYDISTUTILSPKG variable to "yes" so pkgsrc
3471 will make use of this framework. "distutils" uses a script called setup.py, if
3472 the "distutils" driver is not called setup.py, set the PYSETUP variable to the
3475 If the default Python versions are not supported by the software, set the
3476 PYTHON_VERSIONS_ACCEPTED variable to the Python versions the software is known
3477 to work with, from the most recent to the older one, e.g.
3479 PYTHON_VERSIONS_ACCEPTED= 25 24
3481 If the packaged software is a Python module, include "../../lang/python/
3482 extension.mk". In this case, the package directory should be called "
3483 py-software" and PKGNAME should be set to "${PYPKGPREFIX}-${DISTNAME}", e.g.
3485 DISTNAME= foopymodule-1.2.10
3486 PKGNAME= ${PYPKGPREFIX}-${DISTNAME}
3488 If it is an application, also include "../../lang/python/application.mk" before
3491 If the packaged software, either it is an application or a module, is
3492 egg-aware, you only need to include "../../lang/python/egg.mk".
3494 In order to correctly set the path to the Python interpreter, use the
3495 REPLACE_PYTHON variable and set it to the list of files that must be corrected.
3498 REPLACE_PYTHON= ${WRKSRC}/*.py
3502 10.2.1. How the www/nvu package came into pkgsrc
3504 10.2.1.1. The initial package
3506 Looking at the file pkgsrc/doc/TODO, I saw that the "nvu" package has not yet
3507 been imported into pkgsrc. As the description says it has to do with the web,
3508 the obvious choice for the category is "www".
3513 The web site says that the sources are available as a tar file, so I fed that
3514 URL to the url2pkg program:
3516 $ url2pkg http://cvs.nvu.com/download/nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3518 My editor popped up, and I added a PKGNAME line below the DISTNAME line, as the
3519 package name should not have the word "sources" in it. I also filled in the
3520 MAINTAINER, HOMEPAGE and COMMENT fields. Then the package Makefile looked like
3526 DISTNAME= nvu-1.0-sources
3529 MASTER_SITES= http://cvs.nvu.com/download/
3530 EXTRACT_SUFX= .tar.bz2
3532 MAINTAINER= rillig@NetBSD.org
3533 HOMEPAGE= http://cvs.nvu.com/
3534 COMMENT= Web Authoring System
3536 # url2pkg-marker (please do not remove this line.)
3537 .include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk"
3539 Then, I quit the editor and watched pkgsrc downloading a large source archive:
3541 url2pkg> Running "make makesum" ...
3542 => Required installed package digest>=20010302: digest-20060826 found
3543 => Fetching nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3544 Requesting http://cvs.nvu.com/download/nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3545 100% |*************************************| 28992 KB 150.77 KB/s00:00 ETA
3546 29687976 bytes retrieved in 03:12 (150.77 KB/s)
3547 url2pkg> Running "make extract" ...
3548 => Required installed package digest>=20010302: digest-20060826 found
3549 => Checksum SHA1 OK for nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3550 => Checksum RMD160 OK for nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3551 work.bacc -> /tmp/roland/pkgsrc/www/nvu/work.bacc
3552 ===> Installing dependencies for nvu-1.0
3553 ===> Overriding tools for nvu-1.0
3554 ===> Extracting for nvu-1.0
3555 url2pkg> Adjusting the Makefile.
3557 Remember to correct CATEGORIES, HOMEPAGE, COMMENT, and DESCR when you're done!
3559 Good luck! (See pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.txt for some more help :-)
3561 10.2.1.2. Fixing all kinds of problems to make the package work
3563 Now that the package has been extracted, let's see what's inside it. The
3564 package has a README.txt, but that only says something about mozilla, so it's
3565 probably useless for seeing what dependencies this package has. But since there
3566 is a GNU configure script in the package, let's hope that it will complain
3567 about everything it needs.
3570 => Required installed package digest>=20010302: digest-20060826 found
3571 => Checksum SHA1 OK for nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3572 => Checksum RMD160 OK for nvu-1.0-sources.tar.bz2
3573 ===> Patching for nvu-1.0
3574 ===> Creating toolchain wrappers for nvu-1.0
3575 ===> Configuring for nvu-1.0
3577 configure: error: Perl 5.004 or higher is required.
3579 WARNING: Please add USE_TOOLS+=perl to the package Makefile.
3582 That worked quite well. So I opened the package Makefile in my editor, and
3583 since it already has a USE_TOOLS line, I just appended "perl" to it. Since the
3584 dependencies of the package have changed now, and since a perl wrapper is
3585 automatically installed in the "tools" phase, I need to build the package from
3589 ===> Cleaning for nvu-1.0
3592 *** /tmp/roland/pkgsrc/www/nvu/work.bacc/.tools/bin/make is not \
3593 GNU Make. You will not be able to build Mozilla without GNU Make.
3596 So I added "gmake" to the USE_TOOLS line and tried again (from scratch).
3599 checking for GTK - version >= 1.2.0... no
3600 *** Could not run GTK test program, checking why...
3603 Now to the other dependencies. The first question is: Where is the GTK package
3612 $ echo ../../*/gtk2/bui*
3613 ../../x11/gtk2/buildlink3.mk
3615 The first try was definitely too broad. The second one had exactly one result,
3616 which is very good. But there is one pitfall with GNOME packages. Before GNOME
3617 2 had been released, there were already many GNOME 1 packages in pkgsrc. To be
3618 able to continue to use these packages, the GNOME 2 packages were imported as
3619 separate packages, and their names usually have a "2" appended. So I checked
3620 whether this was the case here, and indeed it was.
3622 Since the GTK2 package has a buildlink3.mk file, adding the dependency is very
3623 easy. I just inserted an .include line before the last line of the package
3624 Makefile, so that it now looks like this:
3627 .include "../../x11/gtk2/buildlink3.mk"
3628 .include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk
3630 After another bmake clean && bmake, the answer was:
3633 checking for gtk-config... /home/roland/pkg/bin/gtk-config
3634 checking for GTK - version >= 1.2.0... no
3635 *** Could not run GTK test program, checking why...
3636 *** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
3637 *** exact error that occured. This usually means GTK was incorrectly installed
3638 *** or that you have moved GTK since it was installed. In the latter case, you
3639 *** may want to edit the gtk-config script: /home/roland/pkg/bin/gtk-config
3640 configure: error: Test for GTK failed.
3643 In this particular case, the assumption that "every package prefers GNOME 2"
3644 had been wrong. The first of the lines above told me that this package really
3645 wanted to have the GNOME 1 version of GTK. If the package had looked for GTK2,
3646 it would have looked for pkg-config instead of gtk-config. So I changed the x11
3647 /gtk2 to x11/gtk in the package Makefile, and tried again.
3650 cc -o xpidl.o -c -DOSTYPE=\"NetBSD3\" -DOSARCH=\"NetBSD\" -I../../../dist/include/xpcom -I../../../dist/include -I/tmp/roland/pkgsrc/www/nvu/work.bacc/mozilla/dist/include/nspr -I/usr/X11R6/include -fPIC -DPIC -I/home/roland/pkg/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -Wall -W -Wno-unused -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Wno-long-long -pedantic -O2 -I/home/roland/pkg/include -I/usr/include -Dunix -pthread -pipe -DDEBUG -D_DEBUG -DDEBUG_roland -DTRACING -g -I/home/roland/pkg/include/glib/glib-1.2 -I/home/roland/pkg/lib/glib/include -I/usr/pkg/include/orbit-1.0 -I/home/roland/pkg/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -include ../../../mozilla-config.h -DMOZILLA_CLIENT -Wp,-MD,.deps/xpidl.pp xpidl.c
3651 In file included from xpidl.c:42:
3652 xpidl.h:53:24: libIDL/IDL.h: No such file or directory
3653 In file included from xpidl.c:42:
3654 xpidl.h:132: error: parse error before "IDL_ns"
3657 The package still does not find all of its dependencies. Now the question is:
3658 Which package provides the libIDL/IDL.h header file?
3660 $ echo ../../*/*idl*
3661 ../../devel/py-idle ../../wip/idled ../../x11/acidlaunch
3662 $ echo ../../*/*IDL*
3665 Let's take the one from the second try. So I included the ../../net/libIDL/
3666 buildlink3.mk file and tried again. But the error didn't change. After digging
3667 through some of the code, I concluded that the build process of the package was
3668 broken and couldn't have ever worked, but since the Mozilla source tree is
3669 quite large, I didn't want to fix it. So I added the following to the package
3670 Makefile and tried again:
3672 CPPFLAGS+= -I${BUILDLINK_PREFIX.libIDL}/include/libIDL-2.0
3673 BUILDLINK_TRANSFORM+= -l:IDL:IDL-2
3675 The latter line is needed because the package expects the library libIDL.so,
3676 but only libIDL-2.so is available. So I told the compiler wrapper to rewrite
3679 The next problem was related to a recent change of the FreeType interface. I
3680 looked up in www/seamonkey which patch files were relevant for this issue and
3681 copied them to the patches directory. Then I retried, fixed the patches so that
3682 they applied cleanly and retried again. This time, everything worked.
3684 10.2.1.3. Installing the package
3686 $ bmake CHECK_FILES=no install
3688 $ bmake print-PLIST >PLIST
3692 Chapter 11. Package components - files, directories and contents
3700 11.3.1. Structure of a single patch file
3701 11.3.2. Creating patch files
3702 11.3.3. Sources where the patch files come from
3703 11.3.4. Patching guidelines
3704 11.3.5. Feedback to the author
3706 11.4. Other mandatory files
3707 11.5. Optional files
3709 11.5.1. Files affecting the binary package
3710 11.5.2. Files affecting the build process
3711 11.5.3. Files affecting nothing at all
3716 Whenever you're preparing a package, there are a number of files involved which
3717 are described in the following sections.
3721 Building, installation and creation of a binary package are all controlled by
3722 the package's Makefile. The Makefile describes various things about a package,
3723 for example from where to get it, how to configure, build, and install it.
3725 A package Makefile contains several sections that describe the package.
3727 In the first section there are the following variables, which should appear
3728 exactly in the order given here. The order and grouping of the variables is
3729 mostly historical and has no further meaning.
3731 * DISTNAME is the basename of the distribution file to be downloaded from the
3734 * PKGNAME is the name of the package, as used by pkgsrc. You only need to
3735 provide it if DISTNAME (which is the default) is not a good name for the
3736 package in pkgsrc. Usually it is the pkgsrc directory name together with
3737 the version number. It must match the regular expression ^[A-Za-z0-9]
3738 [A-Za-z0-9-_.+]*$, that is, it starts with a letter or digit, and contains
3739 only letters, digits, dashes, underscores, dots and plus signs.
3741 * SVR4_PKGNAME is the name of the package file to create if the PKGNAME isn't
3742 unique on a SVR4 system. The default is PKGNAME, which may be shortened
3743 when you use pkgtools/gensolpkg. Only add SVR4_PKGNAME if PKGNAME does not
3744 produce an unique package name on a SVR4 system. The length of SVR4_PKGNAME
3745 is limited to 5 characters.
3747 * CATEGORIES is a list of categories which the package fits in. You can
3748 choose any of the top-level directories of pkgsrc for it.
3750 Currently the following values are available for CATEGORIES. If more than
3751 one is used, they need to be separated by spaces:
3753 archivers cross geography meta-pkgs security
3754 audio databases graphics misc shells
3755 benchmarks devel ham multimedia sysutils
3756 biology editors inputmethod net textproc
3757 cad emulators lang news time
3758 chat finance mail parallel wm
3759 comms fonts math pkgtools www
3760 converters games mbone print x11
3762 * MASTER_SITES, DYNAMIC_MASTER_SITES, DIST_SUBDIR, EXTRACT_SUFX and DISTFILES
3763 are discussed in detail in Section 17.5, "The fetch phase".
3765 The second section contains information about separately downloaded patches, if
3768 * PATCHFILES: Name(s) of additional files that contain distribution patches.
3769 There is no default. pkgsrc will look for them at PATCH_SITES. They will
3770 automatically be uncompressed before patching if the names end with .gz or
3773 * PATCH_SITES: Primary location(s) for distribution patch files (see
3774 PATCHFILES below) if not found locally.
3776 The third section contains the following variables.
3778 * MAINTAINER is the email address of the person who feels responsible for
3779 this package, and who is most likely to look at problems or questions
3780 regarding this package which have been reported with send-pr(1). Other
3781 developers may contact the MAINTAINER before making changes to the package,
3782 but are not required to do so. When packaging a new program, set MAINTAINER
3783 to yourself. If you really can't maintain the package for future updates,
3784 set it to <pkgsrc-users@NetBSD.org>.
3786 * OWNER should be used instead of MAINTAINER when you do not want other
3787 developers to update or change the package without contacting you first. A
3788 package Makefile should contain one of MAINTAINER or OWNER, but not both.
3790 * HOMEPAGE is a URL where users can find more information about the package.
3792 * COMMENT is a one-line description of the package (should not include the
3795 Other variables that affect the build:
3797 * WRKSRC: The directory where the interesting distribution files of the
3798 package are found. The default is ${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}, which works for
3801 If a package doesn't create a subdirectory for itself (most GNU software
3802 does, for instance), but extracts itself in the current directory, you
3803 should set WRKSRC=${WRKDIR}.
3805 If a package doesn't create a subdirectory with the name of DISTNAME but
3806 some different name, set WRKSRC to point to the proper name in ${WRKDIR},
3807 for example WRKSRC=${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}/unix. See lang/tcl and x11/tk for
3810 The name of the working directory created by pkgsrc is taken from the
3811 WRKDIR_BASENAME variable. By default, its value is work. If you want to use
3812 the same pkgsrc tree for building different kinds of binary packages, you
3813 can change the variable according to your needs. Two other variables handle
3814 common cases of setting WRKDIR_BASENAME individually. If OBJHOSTNAME is
3815 defined in mk.conf, the first component of the host's name is attached to
3816 the directory name. If OBJMACHINE is defined, the platform name is
3817 attached, which might look like work.i386 or work.sparc.
3819 Please pay attention to the following gotchas:
3821 * Add MANCOMPRESSED if man pages are installed in compressed form by the
3822 package. For packages using BSD-style makefiles which honor MANZ, there is
3823 MANCOMPRESSED_IF_MANZ.
3825 * Replace /usr/local with "${PREFIX}" in all files (see patches, below).
3827 * If the package installs any info files, see Section 19.6.7, "Packages
3828 installing info files".
3832 The distinfo file contains the message digest, or checksum, of each distfile
3833 needed for the package. This ensures that the distfiles retrieved from the
3834 Internet have not been corrupted during transfer or altered by a malign force
3835 to introduce a security hole. Due to recent rumor about weaknesses of digest
3836 algorithms, all distfiles are protected using both SHA1 and RMD160 message
3837 digests, as well as the file size.
3839 The distinfo file also contains the checksums for all the patches found in the
3840 patches directory (see Section 11.3, "patches/*").
3842 To regenerate the distinfo file, use the make makedistinfo or make mdi command.
3844 Some packages have different sets of distfiles depending on the platform, for
3845 example lang/openjdk7. These are kept in the same distinfo file and care should
3846 be taken when upgrading such a package to ensure distfile information is not
3851 Many packages still don't work out-of-the box on the various platforms that are
3852 supported by pkgsrc. Therefore, a number of custom patch files are needed to
3853 make the package work. These patch files are found in the patches/ directory.
3855 In the patch phase, these patches are applied to the files in WRKSRC directory
3856 after extracting them, in alphabetic order.
3858 11.3.1. Structure of a single patch file
3860 The patch-* files should be in diff -bu format, and apply without a fuzz to
3861 avoid problems. (To force patches to apply with fuzz you can set
3862 PATCH_FUZZ_FACTOR=-F2). Furthermore, each patch should contain only changes for
3863 a single file, and no file should be patched by more than one patch file. This
3864 helps to keep future modifications simple.
3866 Each patch file is structured as follows: In the first line, there is the RCS
3867 Id of the patch itself. The second line should be empty for aesthetic reasons.
3868 After that, there should be a comment for each change that the patch does.
3869 There are a number of standard cases:
3871 * Patches for commonly known vulnerabilities should mention the vulnerability
3874 * Patches that change source code should mention the platform and other
3875 environment (for example, the compiler) that the patch is needed for.
3877 In all, the patch should be commented so that any developer who knows the code
3878 of the application can make some use of the patch. Special care should be taken
3879 for the upstream developers, since we generally want that they accept our
3880 patches, so we have less work in the future.
3882 11.3.2. Creating patch files
3884 One important thing to mention is to pay attention that no RCS IDs get stored
3885 in the patch files, as these will cause problems when later checked into the
3886 NetBSD CVS tree. Use the pkgdiff command from the pkgtools/pkgdiff package to
3887 avoid these problems.
3889 For even more automation, we recommend using mkpatches from the same package to
3890 make a whole set of patches. You just have to backup files before you edit them
3891 to filename.orig, e.g. with cp -p filename filename.orig or, easier, by using
3892 pkgvi again from the same package. If you upgrade a package this way, you can
3893 easily compare the new set of patches with the previously existing one with
3894 patchdiff. The files in patches are replaced by new files, so carefully check
3895 if you want to take all the changes.
3897 When you have finished a package, remember to generate the checksums for the
3898 patch files by using the make makepatchsum command, see Section 11.2,
3901 When adding a patch that corrects a problem in the distfile (rather than e.g.
3902 enforcing pkgsrc's view of where man pages should go), send the patch as a bug
3903 report to the maintainer. This benefits non-pkgsrc users of the package, and
3904 usually makes it possible to remove the patch in future version.
3906 The file names of the patch files are usually of the form patch-
3907 path_to_file__with__underscores.c. Many packages still use the previous
3908 convention patch-[a-z][a-z], but new patches should be of the form containing
3909 the filename. mkpatches included in pkgtools/pkgdiff takes care of the name
3912 11.3.3. Sources where the patch files come from
3914 If you want to share patches between multiple packages in pkgsrc, e.g. because
3915 they use the same distfiles, set PATCHDIR to the path where the patch files can
3918 PATCHDIR= ${.CURDIR}/../xemacs/patches
3920 Patch files that are distributed by the author or other maintainers can be
3921 listed in PATCHFILES.
3923 If it is desired to store any patches that should not be committed into pkgsrc,
3924 they can be kept outside the pkgsrc tree in the $LOCALPATCHES directory. The
3925 directory tree there is expected to have the same "category/package" structure
3926 as pkgsrc, and patches are expected to be stored inside these dirs (also known
3927 as $LOCALPATCHES/$PKGPATH). For example, if you want to keep a private patch
3928 for pkgsrc/graphics/png, keep it in $LOCALPATCHES/graphics/png/mypatch. All
3929 files in the named directory are expected to be patch files, and they are
3930 applied after pkgsrc patches are applied.
3932 11.3.4. Patching guidelines
3934 When fixing a portability issue in the code do not use preprocessor magic to
3935 check for the current operating system nor platform. Doing so hurts portability
3936 to other platforms because the OS-specific details are not abstracted
3939 The general rule to follow is: instead of checking for the operating system the
3940 application is being built on, check for the specific features you need. For
3941 example, instead of assuming that kqueue is available under NetBSD and using
3942 the __NetBSD__ macro to conditionalize kqueue support, add a check that detects
3943 kqueue itself ? yes, this generally involves patching the configure script.
3944 There is absolutely nothing that prevents some OSes from adopting interfaces
3945 from other OSes (e.g. Linux implementing kqueue), something that the above
3946 checks cannot take into account.
3948 Of course, checking for features generally involves more work on the
3949 developer's side, but the resulting changes are cleaner and there are chances
3950 they will work on many other platforms. Not to mention that there are higher
3951 chances of being later integrated into the mainstream sources. Remember: It
3952 doesn't work unless it is right!
3954 Some typical examples:
3956 Table 11.1. Patching examples
3958 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
3959 | Where | Incorrect | Correct |
3960 |---------+--------------------------+------------------------------------------------------|
3961 | |case ${target_os} in | |
3962 |configure|netbsd*) have_kvm=yes ;; |AC_CHECK_LIB(kvm, kvm_open, have_kvm=yes, have_kvm=no)|
3963 |script |*) have_kvm=no ;; | |
3965 |---------+--------------------------+------------------------------------------------------|
3966 |C source |#if defined(__NetBSD__) |#if defined(HAVE_SYS_EVENT_H) |
3967 |file |# include <sys/event.h> |# include <sys/event.h> |
3969 |---------+--------------------------+------------------------------------------------------|
3971 | |monitor_file(...) |monitor_file(...) |
3973 | |#if defined(__NetBSD__) |#if defined(HAVE_KQUEUE) |
3974 |C source | int fd = kqueue();| int fd = kqueue(); |
3980 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
3983 For more information, please read the Making packager-friendly software article
3984 (part 1, part 2). It summarizes multiple details on how to make software easier
3985 to package; all the suggestions in it were collected from our experience in
3986 pkgsrc work, so they are possibly helpful when creating patches too.
3988 11.3.5. Feedback to the author
3990 Always, always, always feed back any portability fixes or improvements you do
3991 to a package to the mainstream developers. This is the only way to get their
3992 attention on portability issues and to ensure that future versions can be built
3993 out-of-the box on NetBSD. Furthermore, any user that gets newer distfiles will
3994 get the fixes straight from the packaged code.
3996 This generally involves cleaning up the patches (because sometimes the patches
3997 that are added to pkgsrc are quick hacks), filling bug reports in the
3998 appropriate trackers for the projects and working with the mainstream authors
3999 to accept your changes. It is extremely important that you do it so that the
4000 packages in pkgsrc are kept simple and thus further changes can be done without
4003 When you have done this, please add a URL to the upstream bug report to the
4006 Support the idea of free software!
4008 11.4. Other mandatory files
4012 A multi-line description of the piece of software. This should include any
4013 credits where they are due. Please bear in mind that others do not share
4014 your sense of humour (or spelling idiosyncrasies), and that others will
4015 read everything that you write here.
4019 This file governs the files that are installed on your system: all the
4020 binaries, manual pages, etc. There are other directives which may be
4021 entered in this file, to control the creation and deletion of directories,
4022 and the location of inserted files. See Chapter 13, PLIST issues for more
4025 11.5. Optional files
4027 11.5.1. Files affecting the binary package
4031 This shell script is invoked twice by pkg_add(1). First time after package
4032 extraction and before files are moved in place, the second time after the
4033 files to install are moved in place. This can be used to do any custom
4034 procedures not possible with @exec commands in PLIST. See pkg_add(1) and
4035 pkg_create(1) for more information. See also Section 15.1, "Files and
4036 directories outside the installation prefix".
4040 This script is executed before and after any files are removed. It is this
4041 script's responsibility to clean up any additional messy details around the
4042 package's installation, since all pkg_delete knows is how to delete the
4043 files created in the original distribution. See pkg_delete(1) and
4044 pkg_create(1) for more information.
4048 This file is displayed after installation of the package. Useful for things
4049 like legal notices on almost-free software and hints for updating config
4050 files after installing modules for apache, PHP etc. Please note that you
4051 can modify variables in it easily by using MESSAGE_SUBST in the package's
4054 MESSAGE_SUBST+= SOMEVAR="somevalue"
4056 replaces "${SOMEVAR}" with "somevalue" in MESSAGE. By default, substitution
4057 is performed for PKGNAME, PKGBASE, PREFIX, LOCALBASE, X11PREFIX, X11BASE,
4058 PKG_SYSCONFDIR, ROOT_GROUP, and ROOT_USER.
4060 You can display a different or additional files by setting the MESSAGE_SRC
4061 variable. Its default is MESSAGE, if the file exists.
4065 FIXME: There is no documentation on the alternatives framework.
4067 11.5.2. Files affecting the build process
4071 This file contains arbitrary things that could also go into a Makefile, but
4072 its purpose is to be used by more than one package. This file should only
4073 be used when the packages that will use the file are known in advance. For
4074 other purposes it is often better to write a *.mk file and give it a good
4075 name that describes what it does.
4079 This file contains the dependency information for the buildlink3 framework
4080 (see Chapter 14, Buildlink methodology).
4084 This file contains workarounds for compiler bugs and similar things. It is
4085 included automatically by the pkgsrc infrastructure, so you don't need an
4086 extra .include line for it.
4090 This file contains the code for the package-specific options (see
4091 Chapter 16, Options handling) that can be selected by the user. If a
4092 package has only one or two options, it is equally acceptable to put the
4093 code directly into the Makefile.
4095 11.5.3. Files affecting nothing at all
4099 These files do not take place in the creation of a package and thus are
4100 purely informative to the package developer.
4104 This file contains things that need to be done to make the package even
4109 When you type make, the distribution files are unpacked into the directory
4110 denoted by WRKDIR. It can be removed by running make clean. Besides the
4111 sources, this directory is also used to keep various timestamp files. The
4112 directory gets removed completely on clean. The default is ${.CURDIR}/work or $
4113 {.CURDIR}/work.${MACHINE_ARCH} if OBJMACHINE is set.
4117 If you have any files that you wish to be placed in the package prior to
4118 configuration or building, you could place these files here and use a ${CP}
4119 command in the "pre-configure" target to achieve this. Alternatively, you could
4120 simply diff the file against /dev/null and use the patch mechanism to manage
4121 the creation of this file.
4123 If you want to share files in this way with other packages, set the FILESDIR
4124 variable to point to the other package's files directory, e.g.:
4126 FILESDIR=${.CURDIR}/../xemacs/files
4128 Chapter 12. Programming in Makefiles
4133 12.2. Makefile variables
4135 12.2.1. Naming conventions
4139 12.3.1. Adding things to a list
4140 12.3.2. Converting an internal list into an external list
4141 12.3.3. Passing variables to a shell command
4142 12.3.4. Quoting guideline
4143 12.3.5. Workaround for a bug in BSD Make
4145 Pkgsrc consists of many Makefile fragments, each of which forms a well-defined
4146 part of the pkgsrc system. Using the make(1) system as a programming language
4147 for a big system like pkgsrc requires some discipline to keep the code correct
4150 The basic ingredients for Makefile programming are variables (which are
4151 actually macros) and shell commands. Among these shell commands may even be
4152 more complex ones like awk(1) programs. To make sure that every shell command
4153 runs as intended it is necessary to quote all variables correctly when they are
4156 This chapter describes some patterns, that appear quite often in Makefiles,
4157 including the pitfalls that come along with them.
4161 * When you are creating a file as a target of a rule, always write the data
4162 to a temporary file first and finally rename that file. Otherwise there
4163 might occur an error in the middle of generating the file, and when the
4164 user runs make(1) for the second time, the file exists and will not be
4165 regenerated properly. Example:
4168 @echo "line 1" > ${.TARGET}
4169 @echo "line 2" >> ${.TARGET}
4173 @echo "line 1" > ${.TARGET}.tmp
4174 @echo "line 2" >> ${.TARGET}.tmp
4176 @mv ${.TARGET}.tmp ${.TARGET}
4178 When you run make wrong twice, the file wrong will exist, although there
4179 was an error message in the first run. On the other hand, running make
4180 correct gives an error message twice, as expected.
4182 You might remember that make(1) sometimes removes ${.TARGET} in case of
4183 error, but this only happens when it is interrupted, for example by
4184 pressing ^C. This does not happen when one of the commands fails (like
4187 12.2. Makefile variables
4189 Makefile variables contain strings that can be processed using the five
4190 operators ``='', ``+='', ``?='', ``:='', and ``!='', which are described in the
4193 When a variable's value is parsed from a Makefile, the hash character ``#'' and
4194 the backslash character ``\'' are handled specially. If a backslash is followed
4195 by a newline, any whitespace immediately in front of the backslash, the
4196 backslash, the newline, and any whitespace immediately behind the newline are
4197 replaced with a single space. A backslash character and an immediately
4198 following hash character are replaced with a single hash character. Otherwise,
4199 the backslash is passed as is. In a variable assignment, any hash character
4200 that is not preceded by a backslash starts a comment that continues upto the
4201 end of the logical line.
4203 Note: Because of this parsing algorithm the only way to create a variable
4204 consisting of a single backslash is using the ``!='' operator, for example:
4205 BACKSLASH!=echo "\\".
4207 So far for defining variables. The other thing you can do with variables is
4208 evaluating them. A variable is evaluated when it is part of the right side of
4209 the ``:='' or the ``!='' operator, or directly before executing a shell command
4210 which the variable is part of. In all other cases, make(1) performs lazy
4211 evaluation, that is, variables are not evaluated until there's no other way.
4212 The ``modifiers'' mentioned in the man page also evaluate the variable.
4214 Some of the modifiers split the string into words and then operate on the
4215 words, others operate on the string as a whole. When a string is split into
4216 words, it is split as you would expect it from sh(1).
4218 No rule without exception?the .for loop does not follow the shell quoting rules
4219 but splits at sequences of whitespace.
4221 There are several types of variables that should be handled differently.
4222 Strings and two types of lists.
4224 * Strings can contain arbitrary characters. Nevertheless, you should restrict
4225 yourself to only using printable characters. Examples are PREFIX and
4228 * Internal lists are lists that are never exported to any shell command.
4229 Their elements are separated by whitespace. Therefore, the elements
4230 themselves cannot have embedded whitespace. Any other characters are
4231 allowed. Internal lists can be used in .for loops. Examples are DEPENDS and
4234 * External lists are lists that may be exported to a shell command. Their
4235 elements can contain any characters, including whitespace. That's why they
4236 cannot be used in .for loops. Examples are DISTFILES and MASTER_SITES.
4238 12.2.1. Naming conventions
4240 * All variable names starting with an underscore are reserved for use by the
4241 pkgsrc infrastructure. They shall not be used by package Makefiles.
4243 * In .for loops you should use lowercase variable names for the iteration
4246 * All list variables should have a ``plural'' name, e.g. PKG_OPTIONS or
4251 This section presents you with some code snippets you should use in your own
4252 code. If you don't find anything appropriate here, you should test your code
4255 12.3.1. Adding things to a list
4257 STRING= foo * bar `date`
4259 ANOTHER_INT_LIST= apache-[0-9]*:../../www/apache
4261 ANOTHER_EXT_LIST= a=b c=d
4263 INT_LIST+= ${STRING} # 1
4264 INT_LIST+= ${ANOTHER_INT_LIST} # 2
4265 EXT_LIST+= ${STRING:Q} # 3
4266 EXT_LIST+= ${ANOTHER_EXT_LIST} # 4
4268 When you add a string to an external list (example 3), it must be quoted. In
4269 all other cases, you must not add a quoting level. You must not merge internal
4270 and external lists, unless you are sure that all entries are correctly
4271 interpreted in both lists.
4273 12.3.2. Converting an internal list into an external list
4276 .for i in ${INT_LIST}
4280 This code converts the internal list INT_LIST into the external list EXT_LIST.
4281 As the elements of an internal list are unquoted they must be quoted here. The
4282 reason for appending "" is explained below.
4284 12.3.3. Passing variables to a shell command
4286 Sometimes you may want to print an arbitrary string. There are many ways to get
4287 it wrong and only few that can handle every nastiness.
4289 STRING= foo bar < > * `date` $$HOME ' "
4290 EXT_LIST= string=${STRING:Q} x=second\ item
4294 echo "${STRING}" # 2
4295 echo "${STRING:Q}" # 3
4296 echo ${STRING:Q} # 4
4297 echo x${STRING:Q} | sed 1s,.,, # 5
4298 printf "%s\\n" ${STRING:Q}"" # 6
4299 env ${EXT_LIST} /bin/sh -c 'echo "$$string"; echo "$$x"'
4301 Example 1 leads to a syntax error in the shell, as the characters are just
4304 Example 2 leads to a syntax error too, and if you leave out the last "
4305 character from ${STRING}, date(1) will be executed. The $HOME shell variable
4306 would be evaluated, too.
4308 Example 3 outputs each space character preceded by a backslash (or not),
4309 depending on the implementation of the echo(1) command.
4311 Example 4 handles correctly every string that does not start with a dash. In
4312 that case, the result depends on the implementation of the echo(1) command. As
4313 long as you can guarantee that your input does not start with a dash, this form
4316 Example 5 handles even the case of a leading dash correctly.
4318 Example 6 also works with every string and is the light-weight solution, since
4319 it does not involve a pipe, which has its own problems.
4321 The EXT_LIST does not need to be quoted because the quoting has already been
4322 done when adding elements to the list.
4324 As internal lists shall not be passed to the shell, there is no example for it.
4326 12.3.4. Quoting guideline
4328 There are many possible sources of wrongly quoted variables. This section lists
4329 some of the commonly known ones.
4331 * Whenever you use the value of a list, think about what happens to leading
4332 or trailing whitespace. If the list is a well-formed shell expression, you
4333 can apply the :M* modifier to strip leading and trailing whitespace from
4334 each word. The :M operator first splits its argument according to the rules
4335 of the shell, and then creates a new list consisting of all words that
4336 match the shell glob expression *, that is: all. One class of situations
4337 where this is needed is when adding a variable like CPPFLAGS to
4338 CONFIGURE_ARGS. If the configure script invokes other configure scripts, it
4339 strips the leading and trailing whitespace from the variable and then
4340 passes it to the other configure scripts. But these configure scripts
4341 expect the (child) CPPFLAGS variable to be the same as the parent CPPFLAGS.
4342 That's why we better pass the CPPFLAGS value properly trimmed. And here is
4346 CPPFLAGS+= -Wundef -DPREFIX=\"${PREFIX:Q}\"
4347 CPPFLAGS+= ${MY_CPPFLAGS}
4349 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= CPPFLAGS=${CPPFLAGS:M*:Q}
4352 echo x${CPPFLAGS:Q}x # leading and trailing whitespace
4353 echo x${CONFIGURE_ARGS}x # properly trimmed
4355 * The example above contains one bug: The ${PREFIX} is a properly quoted
4356 shell expression, but there is the C compiler after it, which also expects
4357 a properly quoted string (this time in C syntax). The version above is
4358 therefore only correct if ${PREFIX} does not have embedded backslashes or
4359 double quotes. If you want to allow these, you have to add another layer of
4360 quoting to each variable that is used as a C string literal. You cannot use
4361 the :Q operator for it, as this operator only works for the shell.
4363 * Whenever a variable can be empty, the :Q operator can have surprising
4364 results. Here are two completely different cases which can be solved with
4369 for i in a ${EMPTY:Q} c; do \
4374 .for i in a:\ a:\test.txt
4379 The first example will only print two of the three lines we might have
4380 expected. This is because ${EMPTY:Q} expands to the empty string, which the
4381 shell cannot see. The workaround is to write ${EMPTY:Q}"". This pattern can
4382 be often found as ${TEST} -z ${VAR:Q} or as ${TEST} -f ${FNAME:Q} (both of
4385 The second example will only print three lines instead of four. The first
4386 line looks like a:\ echo foo. This is because the backslash of the value a:
4387 \ is interpreted as a line-continuation by make(1), which makes the second
4388 line the arguments of the echo(1) command from the first line. To avoid
4389 this, write ${i:Q}"".
4391 12.3.5. Workaround for a bug in BSD Make
4393 The pkgsrc bmake program does not handle the following assignment correctly. In
4394 case _othervar_ contains a ``-'' character, one of the closing braces is
4395 included in ${VAR} after this code executes.
4397 VAR:= ${VAR:N${_othervar_:C/-//}}
4399 For a more complex code snippet and a workaround, see the package regress/
4400 make-quoting, testcase bug1.
4402 Chapter 13. PLIST issues
4407 13.2. Semi-automatic PLIST generation
4408 13.3. Tweaking output of make print-PLIST
4409 13.4. Variable substitution in PLIST
4410 13.5. Man page compression
4411 13.6. Changing PLIST source with PLIST_SRC
4412 13.7. Platform-specific and differing PLISTs
4413 13.8. Sharing directories between packages
4415 The PLIST file contains a package's "packing list", i.e. a list of files that
4416 belong to the package (relative to the ${PREFIX} directory it's been installed
4417 in) plus some additional statements - see the pkg_create(1) man page for a full
4418 list. This chapter addresses some issues that need attention when dealing with
4419 the PLIST file (or files, see below!).
4423 Be sure to add a RCS ID line as the first thing in any PLIST file you write:
4428 13.2. Semi-automatic PLIST generation
4430 You can use the make print-PLIST command to output a PLIST that matches any new
4431 files since the package was extracted. See Section 17.17, "Other helpful
4432 targets" for more information on this target.
4434 13.3. Tweaking output of make print-PLIST
4436 If you have used any of the *-dirs packages, as explained in Section 13.8,
4437 "Sharing directories between packages", you may have noticed that make
4438 print-PLIST outputs a set of @comments instead of real @dirrm lines. You can
4439 also do this for specific directories and files, so that the results of that
4440 command are very close to reality. This helps a lot during the update of
4443 The PRINT_PLIST_AWK variable takes a set of AWK patterns and actions that are
4444 used to filter the output of print-PLIST. You can append any chunk of AWK
4445 scripting you like to it, but be careful with quoting.
4447 For example, to get all files inside the libdata/foo directory removed from the
4450 PRINT_PLIST_AWK+= /^libdata\/foo/ { next; }
4453 And to get all the @dirrm lines referring to a specific (shared) directory
4454 converted to @comments:
4456 PRINT_PLIST_AWK+= /^@dirrm share\/specific/ { print "@comment " $$0; next; }
4459 13.4. Variable substitution in PLIST
4461 A number of variables are substituted automatically in PLISTs when a package is
4462 installed on a system. This includes the following variables:
4464 ${MACHINE_ARCH}, ${MACHINE_GNU_ARCH}
4466 Some packages like emacs and perl embed information about which
4467 architecture they were built on into the pathnames where they install their
4468 files. To handle this case, PLIST will be preprocessed before actually
4469 used, and the symbol "${MACHINE_ARCH}" will be replaced by what uname -p
4470 gives. The same is done if the string ${MACHINE_GNU_ARCH} is embedded in
4471 PLIST somewhere - use this on packages that have GNU autoconf-created
4476 There used to be a symbol "$ARCH" that was replaced by the output of uname
4477 -m, but that's no longer supported and has been removed.
4479 ${OPSYS}, ${LOWER_OPSYS}, ${OS_VERSION}
4481 Some packages want to embed the OS name and version into some paths. To do
4482 this, use these variables in the PLIST:
4484 * ${OPSYS} - output of "uname -s"
4486 * ${LOWER_OPSYS} - lowercase common name (eg. "solaris")
4488 * ${OS_VERSION} - "uname -r"
4490 For a complete list of values which are replaced by default, please look in
4491 bsd.pkg.mk (and search for PLIST_SUBST).
4493 If you want to change other variables not listed above, you can add variables
4494 and their expansions to this variable in the following way, similar to
4495 MESSAGE_SUBST (see Section 11.5, "Optional files"):
4497 PLIST_SUBST+= SOMEVAR="somevalue"
4500 This replaces all occurrences of "${SOMEVAR}" in the PLIST with "somevalue".
4502 The PLIST_VARS variable can be used to simplify the common case of
4503 conditionally including some PLIST entries. It can be done by adding
4504 PLIST_VARS+=foo and setting the corresponding PLIST.foo variable to yes if the
4505 entry should be included. This will substitute "${PLIST.foo}" in the PLIST with
4506 either """" or ""@comment "". For example, in Makefile:
4520 ${PLIST.foo}man/man1/foo.1
4521 ${PLIST.foo}share/bar/foo.data
4522 ${PLIST.foo}@dirrm share/bar
4525 13.5. Man page compression
4527 Man pages should be installed in compressed form if MANZ is set (in
4528 bsd.own.mk), and uncompressed otherwise. To handle this in the PLIST file, the
4529 suffix ".gz" is appended/removed automatically for man pages according to MANZ
4530 and MANCOMPRESSED being set or not, see above for details. This modification of
4531 the PLIST file is done on a copy of it, not PLIST itself.
4533 13.6. Changing PLIST source with PLIST_SRC
4535 To use one or more files as source for the PLIST used in generating the binary
4536 package, set the variable PLIST_SRC to the names of that file(s). The files are
4537 later concatenated using cat(1), and the order of things is important. The
4538 default for PLIST_SRC is ${PKGDIR}/PLIST.
4540 13.7. Platform-specific and differing PLISTs
4542 Some packages decide to install a different set of files based on the operating
4543 system being used. These differences can be automatically handled by using the
4550 * PLIST.${MACHINE_ARCH}
4552 * PLIST.${OPSYS}-${MACHINE_ARCH}
4556 13.8. Sharing directories between packages
4558 A "shared directory" is a directory where multiple (and unrelated) packages
4559 install files. These directories were problematic because you had to add
4560 special tricks in the PLIST to conditionally remove them, or have some
4561 centralized package handle them.
4563 In pkgsrc, it is now easy: Each package should create directories and install
4564 files as needed; pkg_delete will remove any directories left empty after
4565 uninstalling a package.
4567 If a package needs an empty directory to work, create the directory during
4568 installation as usual, and also add an entry to the PLIST:
4570 @pkgdir path/to/empty/directory
4573 Chapter 14. Buildlink methodology
4577 14.1. Converting packages to use buildlink3
4578 14.2. Writing buildlink3.mk files
4580 14.2.1. Anatomy of a buildlink3.mk file
4581 14.2.2. Updating BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg and BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg in
4584 14.3. Writing builtin.mk files
4586 14.3.1. Anatomy of a builtin.mk file
4587 14.3.2. Global preferences for native or pkgsrc software
4589 Buildlink is a framework in pkgsrc that controls what headers and libraries are
4590 seen by a package's configure and build processes. This is implemented in a two
4593 1. Symlink headers and libraries for dependencies into BUILDLINK_DIR, which by
4594 default is a subdirectory of WRKDIR.
4596 2. Create wrapper scripts that are used in place of the normal compiler tools
4597 that translate -I${LOCALBASE}/include and -L${LOCALBASE}/lib into
4598 references to BUILDLINK_DIR. The wrapper scripts also make native compiler
4599 on some operating systems look like GCC, so that packages that expect GCC
4600 won't require modifications to build with those native compilers.
4602 This normalizes the environment in which a package is built so that the package
4603 may be built consistently despite what other software may be installed. Please
4604 note that the normal system header and library paths, e.g. /usr/include, /usr/
4605 lib, etc., are always searched -- buildlink3 is designed to insulate the
4606 package build from non-system-supplied software.
4608 14.1. Converting packages to use buildlink3
4610 The process of converting packages to use the buildlink3 framework ("bl3ifying"
4611 ) is fairly straightforward. The things to keep in mind are:
4613 1. Ensure that the build always calls the wrapper scripts instead of the
4614 actual toolchain. Some packages are tricky, and the only way to know for
4615 sure is the check ${WRKDIR}/.work.log to see if the wrappers are being
4618 2. Don't override PREFIX from within the package Makefile, e.g. Java VMs,
4619 standalone shells, etc., because the code to symlink files into $
4620 {BUILDLINK_DIR} looks for files relative to "pkg_info -qp pkgname".
4622 3. Remember that only the buildlink3.mk files that you list in a package's
4623 Makefile are added as dependencies for that package.
4625 If a dependency on a particular package is required for its libraries and
4626 headers, then we replace:
4628 DEPENDS+= foo>=1.1.0:../../category/foo
4632 .include "../../category/foo/buildlink3.mk"
4634 The buildlink3.mk files usually define the required dependencies. If you need a
4635 newer version of the dependency when using buildlink3.mk files, then you can
4636 define it in your Makefile; for example:
4638 BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.foo+= foo>=1.1.0
4639 .include "../../category/foo/buildlink3.mk"
4641 There are several buildlink3.mk files in pkgsrc/mk that handle special package
4644 * bdb.buildlink3.mk chooses either the native or a pkgsrc Berkeley DB
4645 implementation based on the values of BDB_ACCEPTED and BDB_DEFAULT.
4647 * curses.buildlink3.mk: If the system comes with neither Curses nor NCurses,
4648 this will take care to install the devel/ncurses package.
4650 * krb5.buildlink3.mk uses the value of KRB5_ACCEPTED to choose between adding
4651 a dependency on Heimdal or MIT-krb5 for packages that require a Kerberos 5
4654 * motif.buildlink3.mk checks for a system-provided Motif installation or adds
4655 a dependency on x11/lesstif or x11/openmotif. The user can set MOTIF_TYPE
4656 to "dt", "lesstif", or "openmotif" to choose which Motif version will be
4659 * oss.buildlink3.mk defines several variables that may be used by packages
4660 that use the Open Sound System (OSS) API.
4662 * pgsql.buildlink3.mk will accept either Postgres 8.0, 8.1, or 8.2, whichever
4663 is found installed. See the file for more information.
4665 * pthread.buildlink3.mk uses the value of PTHREAD_OPTS and checks for native
4666 pthreads or adds a dependency on devel/pth as needed.
4668 * xaw.buildlink3.mk uses the value of XAW_TYPE to choose a particular Athena
4671 The comments in those buildlink3.mk files provide a more complete description
4672 of how to use them properly.
4674 14.2. Writing buildlink3.mk files
4676 A package's buildlink3.mk file is included by Makefiles to indicate the need to
4677 compile and link against header files and libraries provided by the package. A
4678 buildlink3.mk file should always provide enough information to add the correct
4679 type of dependency relationship and include any other buildlink3.mk files that
4680 it needs to find headers and libraries that it needs in turn.
4682 To generate an initial buildlink3.mk file for further editing, Rene Hexel's
4683 pkgtools/createbuildlink package is highly recommended. For most packages, the
4684 following command will generate a good starting point for buildlink3.mk files:
4686 % cd pkgsrc/category/pkgdir
4687 % createbuildlink >buildlink3.mk
4690 14.2.1. Anatomy of a buildlink3.mk file
4692 The following real-life example buildlink3.mk is taken from pkgsrc/graphics/
4695 # $NetBSD: buildlink3.mk,v 1.16 2009/03/20 19:24:45 joerg Exp $
4697 BUILDLINK_TREE+= tiff
4699 .if !defined(TIFF_BUILDLINK3_MK)
4700 TIFF_BUILDLINK3_MK:=
4702 BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.tiff+= tiff>=3.6.1
4703 BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.tiff+= tiff>=3.7.2nb1
4704 BUILDLINK_PKGSRCDIR.tiff?= ../../graphics/tiff
4706 .include "../../devel/zlib/buildlink3.mk"
4707 .include "../../graphics/jpeg/buildlink3.mk"
4708 .endif # TIFF_BUILDLINK3_MK
4710 BUILDLINK_TREE+= -tiff
4712 The header and footer manipulate BUILDLINK_TREE, which is common across all
4713 buildlink3.mk files and is used to track the dependency tree.
4715 The main section is protected from multiple inclusion and controls how the
4716 dependency on pkg is added. Several important variables are set in the section:
4718 * BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg is the actual dependency recorded in the
4719 installed package; this should always be set using += to ensure that we're
4720 appending to any pre-existing list of values. This variable should be set
4721 to the first version of the package that had an backwards-incompatible API
4724 * BUILDLINK_PKGSRCDIR.pkg is the location of the pkg pkgsrc directory.
4726 * BUILDLINK_DEPMETHOD.pkg (not shown above) controls whether we use
4727 BUILD_DEPENDS or DEPENDS to add the dependency on pkg. The build dependency
4728 is selected by setting BUILDLINK_DEPMETHOD.pkg to "build". By default, the
4729 full dependency is used.
4731 * BUILDLINK_INCDIRS.pkg and BUILDLINK_LIBDIRS.pkg (not shown above) are lists
4732 of subdirectories of ${BUILDLINK_PREFIX.pkg} to add to the header and
4733 library search paths. These default to "include" and "lib" respectively.
4735 * BUILDLINK_CPPFLAGS.pkg (not shown above) is the list of preprocessor flags
4736 to add to CPPFLAGS, which are passed on to the configure and build phases.
4737 The "-I" option should be avoided and instead be handled using
4738 BUILDLINK_INCDIRS.pkg as above.
4740 The following variables are all optionally defined within this second section
4741 (protected against multiple inclusion) and control which package files are
4742 symlinked into ${BUILDLINK_DIR} and how their names are transformed during the
4745 * BUILDLINK_FILES.pkg (not shown above) is a shell glob pattern relative to $
4746 {BUILDLINK_PREFIX.pkg} to be symlinked into ${BUILDLINK_DIR}, e.g. include/
4749 * BUILDLINK_FILES_CMD.pkg (not shown above) is a shell pipeline that outputs
4750 to stdout a list of files relative to ${BUILDLINK_PREFIX.pkg}. The
4751 resulting files are to be symlinked into ${BUILDLINK_DIR}. By default, this
4752 takes the +CONTENTS of a pkg and filters it through $
4753 {BUILDLINK_CONTENTS_FILTER.pkg}.
4755 * BUILDLINK_CONTENTS_FILTER.pkg (not shown above) is a filter command that
4756 filters +CONTENTS input into a list of files relative to $
4757 {BUILDLINK_PREFIX.pkg} on stdout. By default for overwrite packages,
4758 BUILDLINK_CONTENTS_FILTER.pkg outputs the contents of the include and lib
4759 directories in the package +CONTENTS, and for pkgviews packages, it outputs
4760 any libtool archives in lib directories.
4762 * BUILDLINK_FNAME_TRANSFORM.pkg (not shown above) is a list of sed arguments
4763 used to transform the name of the source filename into a destination
4764 filename, e.g. -e "s|/curses.h|/ncurses.h|g".
4766 This section can additionally include any buildlink3.mk needed for pkg's
4767 library dependencies. Including these buildlink3.mk files means that the
4768 headers and libraries for these dependencies are also symlinked into $
4769 {BUILDLINK_DIR} whenever the pkg buildlink3.mk file is included. Dependencies
4770 are only added for directly include buildlink3.mk files.
4772 14.2.2. Updating BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg and BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg in
4775 These two variables differ in that one describes source compatibility (API) and
4776 the other binary compatibility (ABI). The difference is that a change in the
4777 API breaks compilation of programs while changes in the ABI stop compiled
4778 programs from running.
4780 Changes to the BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg variable in a buildlink3.mk file
4781 happen very rarely. One possible reason is that all packages depending on this
4782 already need a newer version. In case it is bumped see the description below.
4784 The most common example of an ABI change is that the major version of a shared
4785 library is increased. In this case, BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg should be
4786 adjusted to require at least the new package version. Then the packages that
4787 depend on this package need their PKGREVISIONs increased and, if they have
4788 buildlink3.mk files, their BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg adjusted, too. This is
4789 needed so pkgsrc will require the correct package dependency and not settle for
4790 an older one when building the source.
4792 See Section 19.1.6, "Handling dependencies" for more information about
4793 dependencies on other packages, including the BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS and
4794 ABI_DEPENDS definitions.
4796 Please take careful consideration before adjusting BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg or
4797 BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg as we don't want to cause unneeded package deletions
4798 and rebuilds. In many cases, new versions of packages work just fine with older
4801 Also it is not needed to set BUILDLINK_ABI_DEPENDS.pkg when it is identical to
4802 BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg.
4804 14.3. Writing builtin.mk files
4806 Some packages in pkgsrc install headers and libraries that coincide with
4807 headers and libraries present in the base system. Aside from a buildlink3.mk
4808 file, these packages should also include a builtin.mk file that includes the
4809 necessary checks to decide whether using the built-in software or the pkgsrc
4810 software is appropriate.
4812 The only requirements of a builtin.mk file for pkg are:
4814 1. It should set USE_BUILTIN.pkg to either "yes" or "no" after it is included.
4816 2. It should not override any USE_BUILTIN.pkg which is already set before the
4817 builtin.mk file is included.
4819 3. It should be written to allow multiple inclusion. This is very important
4820 and takes careful attention to Makefile coding.
4822 14.3.1. Anatomy of a builtin.mk file
4824 The following is the recommended template for builtin.mk files:
4826 .if !defined(IS_BUILTIN.foo)
4828 # IS_BUILTIN.foo is set to "yes" or "no" depending on whether "foo"
4829 # genuinely exists in the system or not.
4833 # BUILTIN_PKG.foo should be set here if "foo" is built-in and its package
4834 # version can be determined.
4836 . if !empty(IS_BUILTIN.foo:M[yY][eE][sS])
4837 BUILTIN_PKG.foo?= foo-1.0
4839 .endif # IS_BUILTIN.foo
4841 .if !defined(USE_BUILTIN.foo)
4842 USE_BUILTIN.foo?= ${IS_BUILTIN.foo}
4843 . if defined(BUILTIN_PKG.foo)
4844 . for _depend_ in ${BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.foo}
4845 . if !empty(USE_BUILTIN.foo:M[yY][eE][sS])
4847 ${PKG_ADMIN} pmatch '${_depend_}' ${BUILTIN_PKG.foo} \
4848 && ${ECHO} "yes" || ${ECHO} "no"
4852 .endif # USE_BUILTIN.foo
4854 CHECK_BUILTIN.foo?= no
4855 .if !empty(CHECK_BUILTIN.foo:M[nN][oO])
4857 # Here we place code that depends on whether USE_BUILTIN.foo is set to
4860 .endif # CHECK_BUILTIN.foo
4862 The first section sets IS_BUILTIN.pkg depending on if pkg really exists in the
4863 base system. This should not be a base system software with similar
4864 functionality to pkg; it should only be "yes" if the actual package is included
4865 as part of the base system. This variable is only used internally within the
4868 The second section sets BUILTIN_PKG.pkg to the version of pkg in the base
4869 system if it exists (if IS_BUILTIN.pkg is "yes"). This variable is only used
4870 internally within the builtin.mk file.
4872 The third section sets USE_BUILTIN.pkg and is required in all builtin.mk files.
4873 The code in this section must make the determination whether the built-in
4874 software is adequate to satisfy the dependencies listed in
4875 BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg. This is typically done by comparing BUILTIN_PKG.pkg
4876 against each of the dependencies in BUILDLINK_API_DEPENDS.pkg. USE_BUILTIN.pkg
4877 must be set to the correct value by the end of the builtin.mk file. Note that
4878 USE_BUILTIN.pkg may be "yes" even if IS_BUILTIN.pkg is "no" because we may make
4879 the determination that the built-in version of the software is similar enough
4880 to be used as a replacement.
4882 The last section is guarded by CHECK_BUILTIN.pkg, and includes code that uses
4883 the value of USE_BUILTIN.pkg set in the previous section. This typically
4884 includes, e.g., adding additional dependency restrictions and listing
4885 additional files to symlink into ${BUILDLINK_DIR} (via BUILDLINK_FILES.pkg).
4887 14.3.2. Global preferences for native or pkgsrc software
4889 When building packages, it's possible to choose whether to set a global
4890 preference for using either the built-in (native) version or the pkgsrc version
4891 of software to satisfy a dependency. This is controlled by setting
4892 PREFER_PKGSRC and PREFER_NATIVE. These variables take values of either "yes", "
4893 no", or a list of packages. PREFER_PKGSRC tells pkgsrc to use the pkgsrc
4894 versions of software, while PREFER_NATIVE tells pkgsrc to use the built-in
4895 versions. Preferences are determined by the most specific instance of the
4896 package in either PREFER_PKGSRC or PREFER_NATIVE. If a package is specified in
4897 neither or in both variables, then PREFER_PKGSRC has precedence over
4898 PREFER_NATIVE. For example, to require using pkgsrc versions of software for
4899 all but the most basic bits on a NetBSD system, you can set:
4902 PREFER_NATIVE= getopt skey tcp_wrappers
4904 A package must have a builtin.mk file to be listed in PREFER_NATIVE, otherwise
4905 it is simply ignored in that list.
4907 Chapter 15. The pkginstall framework
4911 15.1. Files and directories outside the installation prefix
4913 15.1.1. Directory manipulation
4914 15.1.2. File manipulation
4916 15.2. Configuration files
4918 15.2.1. How PKG_SYSCONFDIR is set
4919 15.2.2. Telling the software where configuration files are
4920 15.2.3. Patching installations
4921 15.2.4. Disabling handling of configuration files
4923 15.3. System startup scripts
4925 15.3.1. Disabling handling of system startup scripts
4927 15.4. System users and groups
4930 15.5.1. Disabling shell registration
4934 15.6.1. Disabling automatic update of the fonts databases
4936 This chapter describes the framework known as pkginstall, whose key features
4939 * Generic installation and manipulation of directories and files outside the
4940 pkgsrc-handled tree, LOCALBASE.
4942 * Automatic handling of configuration files during installation, provided
4943 that packages are correctly designed.
4945 * Generation and installation of system startup scripts.
4947 * Registration of system users and groups.
4949 * Registration of system shells.
4951 * Automatic updating of fonts databases.
4953 The following sections inspect each of the above points in detail.
4955 You may be thinking that many of the things described here could be easily done
4956 with simple code in the package's post-installation target (post-install). This
4957 is incorrect, as the code in them is only executed when building from source.
4958 Machines using binary packages could not benefit from it at all (as the code
4959 itself could be unavailable). Therefore, the only way to achieve any of the
4960 items described above is by means of the installation scripts, which are
4961 automatically generated by pkginstall.
4963 15.1. Files and directories outside the installation prefix
4965 As you already know, the PLIST file holds a list of files and directories that
4966 belong to a package. The names used in it are relative to the installation
4967 prefix (${PREFIX}), which means that it cannot register files outside this
4968 directory (absolute path names are not allowed). Despite this restriction, some
4969 packages need to install files outside this location; e.g., under ${VARBASE} or
4970 ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}. The only way to achieve this is to create such files during
4971 installation time by using installation scripts.
4973 The generic installation scripts are shell scripts that can contain arbitrary
4974 code. The list of scripts to execute is taken from the INSTALL_FILE variable,
4975 which defaults to INSTALL. A similar variable exists for package removal
4976 (DEINSTALL_FILE, whose default is DEINSTALL). These scripts can run arbitrary
4977 commands, so they have the potential to create and manage files anywhere in the
4980 Using these general installation files is not recommended, but may be needed in
4981 some special cases. One reason for avoiding them is that the user has to trust
4982 the packager that there is no unwanted or simply erroneous code included in the
4983 installation script. Also, previously there were many similar scripts for the
4984 same functionality, and fixing a common error involved finding and changing all
4987 The pkginstall framework offers another, standardized way. It provides generic
4988 scripts to abstract the manipulation of such files and directories based on
4989 variables set in the package's Makefile. The rest of this section describes
4992 15.1.1. Directory manipulation
4994 The following variables can be set to request the creation of directories
4995 anywhere in the file system:
4997 * MAKE_DIRS and OWN_DIRS contain a list of directories that should be created
4998 and should attempt to be destroyed by the installation scripts. The
4999 difference between the two is that the latter prompts the administrator to
5000 remove any directories that may be left after deinstallation (because they
5001 were not empty), while the former does not.
5003 * MAKE_DIRS_PERMS and OWN_DIRS_PERMS contain a list of tuples describing
5004 which directories should be created and should attempt to be destroyed by
5005 the installation scripts. Each tuple holds the following values, separated
5006 by spaces: the directory name, its owner, its group and its numerical mode.
5009 MAKE_DIRS_PERMS+= ${VARBASE}/foo/private ${ROOT_USER} ${ROOT_GROUP} 0700
5011 The difference between the two is exactly the same as their non-PERMS
5014 15.1.2. File manipulation
5016 Creating non-empty files outside the installation prefix is tricky because the
5017 PLIST forces all files to be inside it. To overcome this problem, the only
5018 solution is to extract the file in the known place (i.e., inside the
5019 installation prefix) and copy it to the appropriate location during
5020 installation (done by the installation scripts generated by pkginstall). We
5021 will call the former the master file in the following paragraphs, which
5022 describe the variables that can be used to automatically and consistently
5023 handle files outside the installation prefix:
5025 * CONF_FILES and SUPPORT_FILES are pairs of master and target files. During
5026 installation time, the master file is copied to the target one if and only
5027 if the latter does not exist. Upon deinstallation, the target file is
5028 removed provided that it was not modified by the installation.
5030 The difference between the two is that the latter prompts the administrator
5031 to remove any files that may be left after deinstallation (because they
5032 were not empty), while the former does not.
5034 * CONF_FILES_PERMS and SUPPORT_FILES_PERMS contain tuples describing master
5035 files as well as their target locations. For each of them, it also
5036 specifies their owner, their group and their numeric permissions, in this
5039 SUPPORT_FILES_PERMS+= ${PREFIX}/share/somefile ${VARBASE}/somefile ${ROOT_USER} ${ROOT_GROUP} 0700
5041 The difference between the two is exactly the same as their non-PERMS
5044 15.2. Configuration files
5046 Configuration files are special in the sense that they are installed in their
5047 own specific directory, PKG_SYSCONFDIR, and need special treatment during
5048 installation (most of which is automated by pkginstall). The main concept you
5049 must bear in mind is that files marked as configuration files are automatically
5050 copied to the right place (somewhere inside PKG_SYSCONFDIR) during installation
5051 if and only if they didn't exist before. Similarly, they will not be removed if
5052 they have local modifications. This ensures that administrators never lose any
5053 custom changes they may have made.
5055 15.2.1. How PKG_SYSCONFDIR is set
5057 As said before, the PKG_SYSCONFDIR variable specifies where configuration files
5058 shall be installed. Its contents are set based upon the following variables:
5060 * PKG_SYSCONFBASE: The configuration's root directory. Defaults to ${PREFIX}/
5061 etc although it may be overridden by the user to point to his preferred
5062 location (e.g., /etc, /etc/pkg, etc.). Packages must not use it directly.
5064 * PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR: A subdirectory of PKG_SYSCONFBASE under which the
5065 configuration files for the package being built shall be installed. The
5066 definition of this variable only makes sense in the package's Makefile
5067 (i.e., it is not user-customizable).
5069 As an example, consider the Apache package, www/apache2, which places its
5070 configuration files under the httpd/ subdirectory of PKG_SYSCONFBASE. This
5071 should be set in the package Makefile.
5073 * PKG_SYSCONFVAR: Specifies the name of the variable that holds this
5074 package's configuration directory (if different from PKG_SYSCONFBASE). It
5075 defaults to PKGBASE's value, and is always prefixed with PKG_SYSCONFDIR.
5077 * PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR}: Holds the directory where the
5078 configuration files for the package identified by PKG_SYSCONFVAR's shall be
5081 Based on the above variables, pkginstall determines the value of
5082 PKG_SYSCONFDIR, which is the only variable that can be used within a package to
5083 refer to its configuration directory. The algorithm used to set its value is
5084 basically the following:
5086 1. If PKG_SYSCONFDIR.${PKG_SYSCONFVAR} is set, its value is used.
5088 2. If the previous variable is not defined but PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR is set in the
5089 package's Makefile, the resulting value is ${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}/$
5090 {PKG_SYSCONFSUBDIR}.
5092 3. Otherwise, it is set to ${PKG_SYSCONFBASE}.
5094 It is worth mentioning that ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR} is automatically added to
5095 OWN_DIRS. See Section 15.1.1, "Directory manipulation" what this means. This
5096 does not apply to subdirectories of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}, they still have to be
5097 created with OWN_DIRS or MAKE_DIRS.
5099 15.2.2. Telling the software where configuration files are
5101 Given that pkgsrc (and users!) expect configuration files to be in a known
5102 place, you need to teach each package where it shall install its files. In some
5103 cases you will have to patch the package Makefiles to achieve it. If you are
5104 lucky, though, it may be as easy as passing an extra flag to the configuration
5105 script; this is the case of GNU Autoconf- generated files:
5107 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --sysconfdir=${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}
5109 Note that this specifies where the package has to look for its configuration
5110 files, not where they will be originally installed (although the difference is
5111 never explicit, unfortunately).
5113 15.2.3. Patching installations
5115 As said before, pkginstall automatically handles configuration files. This
5116 means that the packages themselves must not touch the contents of $
5117 {PKG_SYSCONFDIR} directly. Bad news is that many software installation scripts
5118 will, out of the box, mess with the contents of that directory. So what is the
5119 correct procedure to fix this issue?
5121 You must teach the package (usually by manually patching it) to install any
5122 configuration files under the examples hierarchy, share/examples/${PKGBASE}/.
5123 This way, the PLIST registers them and the administrator always has the
5124 original copies available.
5126 Once the required configuration files are in place (i.e., under the examples
5127 hierarchy), the pkginstall framework can use them as master copies during the
5128 package installation to update what is in ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}. To achieve this,
5129 the variables CONF_FILES and CONF_FILES_PERMS are used. Check out
5130 Section 15.1.2, "File manipulation" for information about their syntax and
5131 their purpose. Here is an example, taken from the mail/mutt package:
5133 EGDIR= ${PREFIX}/share/doc/mutt/samples
5134 CONF_FILES= ${EGDIR}/Muttrc ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR}/Muttrc
5136 Note that the EGDIR variable is specific to that package and has no meaning
5139 15.2.4. Disabling handling of configuration files
5141 The automatic copying of config files can be toggled by setting the environment
5142 variable PKG_CONFIG prior to package installation.
5144 15.3. System startup scripts
5146 System startup scripts are special files because they must be installed in a
5147 place known by the underlying OS, usually outside the installation prefix.
5148 Therefore, the same rules described in Section 15.1, "Files and directories
5149 outside the installation prefix" apply, and the same solutions can be used.
5150 However, pkginstall provides a special mechanism to handle these files.
5152 In order to provide system startup scripts, the package has to:
5154 1. Store the script inside ${FILESDIR}, with the .sh suffix appended.
5155 Considering the print/cups package as an example, it has a cupsd.sh in its
5158 2. Tell pkginstall to handle it, appending the name of the script, without its
5159 extension, to the RCD_SCRIPTS variable. Continuing the previous example:
5163 Once this is done, pkginstall will do the following steps for each script in an
5166 1. Process the file found in the files directory applying all the
5167 substitutions described in the FILES_SUBST variable.
5169 2. Copy the script from the files directory to the examples hierarchy, $
5170 {PREFIX}/share/examples/rc.d/. Note that this master file must be
5171 explicitly registered in the PLIST.
5173 3. Add code to the installation scripts to copy the startup script from the
5174 examples hierarchy into the system-wide startup scripts directory.
5176 15.3.1. Disabling handling of system startup scripts
5178 The automatic copying of config files can be toggled by setting the environment
5179 variable PKG_RCD_SCRIPTS prior to package installation. Note that the scripts
5180 will be always copied inside the examples hierarchy, ${PREFIX}/share/examples/
5181 rc.d/, no matter what the value of this variable is.
5183 15.4. System users and groups
5185 If a package needs to create special users and/or groups during installation,
5186 it can do so by using the pkginstall framework.
5188 Users can be created by adding entries to the PKG_USERS variable. Each entry
5189 has the following syntax:
5193 Further specification of user details may be done by setting per-user
5194 variables. PKG_UID.user is the numeric UID for the user. PKG_GECOS.user is the
5195 user's description or comment. PKG_HOME.user is the user's home directory, and
5196 defaults to /nonexistent if not specified. PKG_SHELL.user is the user's shell,
5197 and defaults to /sbin/nologin if not specified.
5199 Similarly, groups can be created by adding entries to the PKG_GROUPS variable,
5204 The numeric GID of the group may be set by defining PKG_GID.group.
5206 If a package needs to create the users and groups at an earlier stage, then it
5207 can set USERGROUP_PHASE to either configure or build to indicate the phase
5208 before which the users and groups are created. In this case, the numeric UIDs
5209 and GIDs of the created users and groups are automatically hardcoded into the
5210 final installation scripts.
5214 Packages that install system shells should register them in the shell database,
5215 /etc/shells, to make things easier to the administrator. This must be done from
5216 the installation scripts to keep binary packages working on any system.
5217 pkginstall provides an easy way to accomplish this task.
5219 When a package provides a shell interpreter, it has to set the PKG_SHELL
5220 variable to its absolute file name. This will add some hooks to the
5221 installation scripts to handle it. Consider the following example, taken from
5224 PKG_SHELL= ${PREFIX}/bin/zsh
5226 15.5.1. Disabling shell registration
5228 The automatic registration of shell interpreters can be disabled by the
5229 administrator by setting the PKG_REGISTER_SHELLS environment variable to NO.
5233 Packages that install X11 fonts should update the database files that index the
5234 fonts within each fonts directory. This can easily be accomplished within the
5235 pkginstall framework.
5237 When a package installs X11 fonts, it must list the directories in which fonts
5238 are installed in the FONTS_DIRS.type variables, where type can be one of "ttf",
5239 "type1" or "x11". This will add hooks to the installation scripts to run the
5240 appropriate commands to update the fonts database files within each of those
5241 directories. For convenience, if the directory path is relative, it is taken to
5242 be relative to the package's installation prefix. Consider the following
5243 example, taken from fonts/dbz-ttf:
5245 FONTS_DIRS.ttf= ${PREFIX}/lib/X11/fonts/TTF
5247 15.6.1. Disabling automatic update of the fonts databases
5249 The automatic update of fonts databases can be disabled by the administrator by
5250 setting the PKG_UPDATE_FONTS_DB environment variable to NO.
5252 Chapter 16. Options handling
5256 16.1. Global default options
5257 16.2. Converting packages to use bsd.options.mk
5259 16.4. Determining the options of dependencies
5261 Many packages have the ability to be built to support different sets of
5262 features. bsd.options.mk is a framework in pkgsrc that provides generic
5263 handling of those options that determine different ways in which the packages
5264 can be built. It's possible for the user to specify exactly which sets of
5265 options will be built into a package or to allow a set of global default
5268 There are two broad classes of behaviors that one might want to control via
5269 options. One is whether some particular feature is enabled in a program that
5270 will be built anyway, often by including or not including a dependency on some
5271 other package. The other is whether or not an additional program will be built
5272 as part of the package. Generally, it is better to make a split package for
5273 such additional programs instead of using options, because it enables binary
5274 packages to be built which can then be added separately. For example, the foo
5275 package might have minimal dependencies (those packages without which foo
5276 doesn't make sense), and then the foo-gfoo package might include the GTK
5277 frontend program gfoo. This is better than including a gtk option to foo that
5278 adds gfoo, because either that option is default, in which case binary users
5279 can't get foo without gfoo, or not default, in which case they can't get gfoo.
5280 With split packages, they can install foo without having GTK, and later decide
5281 to install gfoo (pulling in GTK at that time). This is an advantage to source
5282 users too, avoiding the need for rebuilds.
5284 Plugins with widely varying dependencies should usually be split instead of
5287 It is often more work to maintain split packages, especially if the upstream
5288 package does not support this. The decision of split vs. option should be made
5289 based on the likelihood that users will want or object to the various pieces,
5290 the size of the dependencies that are included, and the amount of work.
5292 A further consideration is licensing. Non-free parts, or parts that depend on
5293 non-free dependencies (especially plugins) should almost always be split if
5296 16.1. Global default options
5298 Global default options are listed in PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS, which is a list of
5299 the options that should be built into every package if that option is
5300 supported. This variable should be set in mk.conf.
5302 16.2. Converting packages to use bsd.options.mk
5304 The following example shows how bsd.options.mk should be used by the
5305 hypothetical ``wibble'' package, either in the package Makefile, or in a file,
5306 e.g. options.mk, that is included by the main package Makefile.
5308 PKG_OPTIONS_VAR= PKG_OPTIONS.wibble
5309 PKG_SUPPORTED_OPTIONS= wibble-foo ldap
5310 PKG_OPTIONS_OPTIONAL_GROUPS= database
5311 PKG_OPTIONS_GROUP.database= mysql pgsql
5312 PKG_SUGGESTED_OPTIONS= wibble-foo
5313 PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_VARS+= WIBBLE_USE_OPENLDAP:ldap
5314 PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_OPTS+= foo:wibble-foo
5316 .include "../../mk/bsd.prefs.mk"
5318 # this package was previously named wibble2
5319 .if defined(PKG_OPTIONS.wibble2)
5320 PKG_LEGACY_OPTIONS+= ${PKG_OPTIONS.wibble2}
5321 PKG_OPTIONS_DEPRECATED_WARNINGS+= \
5322 "Deprecated variable PKG_OPTIONS.wibble2 used, use ${PKG_OPTIONS_VAR} instead."
5325 .include "../../mk/bsd.options.mk"
5327 # Package-specific option-handling
5332 .if !empty(PKG_OPTIONS:Mwibble-foo)
5333 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --enable-foo
5339 .if !empty(PKG_OPTIONS:Mldap)
5340 . include "../../databases/openldap-client/buildlink3.mk"
5341 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --enable-ldap=${BUILDLINK_PREFIX.openldap-client}
5345 ### database support
5347 .if !empty(PKG_OPTIONS:Mmysql)
5348 . include "../../mk/mysql.buildlink3.mk"
5350 .if !empty(PKG_OPTIONS:Mpgsql)
5351 . include "../../mk/pgsql.buildlink3.mk"
5354 The first section contains the information about which build options are
5355 supported by the package, and any default options settings if needed.
5357 1. PKG_OPTIONS_VAR is the name of the make(1) variable that the user can set
5358 to override the default options. It should be set to PKG_OPTIONS.pkgbase.
5359 Do not set it to PKG_OPTIONS.${PKGBASE}, since PKGBASE is not defined at
5360 the point where the options are processed.
5362 2. PKG_SUPPORTED_OPTIONS is a list of build options supported by the package.
5364 3. PKG_OPTIONS_OPTIONAL_GROUPS is a list of names of groups of mutually
5365 exclusive options. The options in each group are listed in
5366 PKG_OPTIONS_GROUP.groupname. The most specific setting of any option from
5367 the group takes precedence over all other options in the group. Options
5368 from the groups will be automatically added to PKG_SUPPORTED_OPTIONS.
5370 4. PKG_OPTIONS_REQUIRED_GROUPS is like PKG_OPTIONS_OPTIONAL_GROUPS, but
5371 building the packages will fail if no option from the group is selected.
5373 5. PKG_OPTIONS_NONEMPTY_SETS is a list of names of sets of options. At least
5374 one option from each set must be selected. The options in each set are
5375 listed in PKG_OPTIONS_SET.setname. Options from the sets will be
5376 automatically added to PKG_SUPPORTED_OPTIONS. Building the package will
5377 fail if no option from the set is selected.
5379 6. PKG_SUGGESTED_OPTIONS is a list of build options which are enabled by
5382 7. PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_VARS is a list of "USE_VARIABLE:option" pairs that map
5383 legacy mk.conf variables to their option counterparts. Pairs should be
5384 added with "+=" to keep the listing of global legacy variables. A warning
5385 will be issued if the user uses a legacy variable.
5387 8. PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_OPTS is a list of "old-option:new-option" pairs that map
5388 options that have been renamed to their new counterparts. Pairs should be
5389 added with "+=" to keep the listing of global legacy options. A warning
5390 will be issued if the user uses a legacy option.
5392 9. PKG_LEGACY_OPTIONS is a list of options implied by deprecated variables
5393 used. This can be used for cases that neither PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_VARS nor
5394 PKG_OPTIONS_LEGACY_OPTS can handle, e. g. when PKG_OPTIONS_VAR is renamed.
5396 10. PKG_OPTIONS_DEPRECATED_WARNINGS is a list of warnings about deprecated
5397 variables or options used, and what to use instead.
5399 A package should never modify PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS or the variable named in
5400 PKG_OPTIONS_VAR. These are strictly user-settable. To suggest a default set of
5401 options, use PKG_SUGGESTED_OPTIONS.
5403 PKG_OPTIONS_VAR must be defined before including bsd.options.mk. If none of
5404 PKG_SUPPORTED_OPTIONS, PKG_OPTIONS_OPTIONAL_GROUPS, and
5405 PKG_OPTIONS_REQUIRED_GROUPS are defined (as can happen with platform-specific
5406 options if none of them is supported on the current platform), PKG_OPTIONS is
5407 set to the empty list and the package is otherwise treated as not using the
5410 After the inclusion of bsd.options.mk, the variable PKG_OPTIONS contains the
5411 list of selected build options, properly filtered to remove unsupported and
5414 The remaining sections contain the logic that is specific to each option. The
5415 correct way to check for an option is to check whether it is listed in
5418 .if !empty(PKG_OPTIONS:Moption)
5422 Options that enable similar features in different packages (like optional
5423 support for a library) should use a common name in all packages that support it
5424 (like the name of the library). If another package already has an option with
5425 the same meaning, use the same name.
5427 Options that enable features specific to one package, where it's unlikely that
5428 another (unrelated) package has the same (or a similar) optional feature,
5429 should use a name prefixed with pkgname-.
5431 If a group of related packages share an optional feature specific to that
5432 group, prefix it with the name of the "main" package (e. g.
5433 djbware-errno-hack).
5435 For new options, add a line to mk/defaults/options.description. Lines have two
5436 fields, separated by tab. The first field is the option name, the second its
5437 description. The description should be a whole sentence (starting with an
5438 uppercase letter and ending with a period) that describes what enabling the
5439 option does. E. g. "Enable ispell support." The file is sorted by option names.
5441 16.4. Determining the options of dependencies
5443 When writing buildlink3.mk files, it is often necessary to list different
5444 dependencies based on the options with which the package was built. For
5445 querying these options, the file pkgsrc/mk/pkg-build-options.mk should be used.
5446 A typical example looks like this:
5448 pkgbase := libpurple
5449 .include "../../mk/pkg-build-options.mk"
5451 .if !empty(PKG_BUILD_OPTIONS.libpurple:Mdbus)
5455 Including pkg-build-options.mk here will set the variable
5456 PKG_BUILD_OPTIONS.libpurple to the build options of the libpurple package,
5457 which can then be queried like PKG_OPTIONS in the options.mk file. See the file
5458 pkg-build-options.mk for more details.
5460 Chapter 17. The build process
5465 17.2. Program location
5466 17.3. Directories used during the build process
5467 17.4. Running a phase
5468 17.5. The fetch phase
5470 17.5.1. What to fetch and where to get it from
5471 17.5.2. How are the files fetched?
5473 17.6. The checksum phase
5474 17.7. The extract phase
5475 17.8. The patch phase
5476 17.9. The tools phase
5477 17.10. The wrapper phase
5478 17.11. The configure phase
5479 17.12. The build phase
5480 17.13. The test phase
5481 17.14. The install phase
5482 17.15. The package phase
5484 17.17. Other helpful targets
5488 This chapter gives a detailed description on how a package is built. Building a
5489 package is separated into different phases (for example fetch, build, install),
5490 all of which are described in the following sections. Each phase is split into
5491 so-called stages, which take the name of the containing phase, prefixed by one
5492 of pre-, do- or post-. (Examples are pre-configure, post-build.) Most of the
5493 actual work is done in the do-* stages.
5495 Never override the regular targets (like fetch), if you have to, override the
5498 The basic steps for building a program are always the same. First the program's
5499 source (distfile) must be brought to the local system and then extracted. After
5500 any pkgsrc-specific patches to compile properly are applied, the software can
5501 be configured, then built (usually by compiling), and finally the generated
5502 binaries, etc. can be put into place on the system.
5504 To get more details about what is happening at each step, you can set the
5505 PKG_VERBOSE variable, or the PATCH_DEBUG variable if you are just interested in
5506 more details about the patch step.
5508 17.2. Program location
5510 Before outlining the process performed by the NetBSD package system in the next
5511 section, here's a brief discussion on where programs are installed, and which
5512 variables influence this.
5514 The automatic variable PREFIX indicates where all files of the final program
5515 shall be installed. It is usually set to LOCALBASE (/usr/pkg), or CROSSBASE for
5516 pkgs in the cross category. The value of PREFIX needs to be put into the
5517 various places in the program's source where paths to these files are encoded.
5518 See Section 11.3, "patches/*" and Section 19.3.1, "Shared libraries - libtool"
5521 When choosing which of these variables to use, follow the following rules:
5523 * PREFIX always points to the location where the current pkg will be
5524 installed. When referring to a pkg's own installation path, use "${PREFIX}"
5527 * LOCALBASE is where all non-X11 pkgs are installed. If you need to construct
5528 a -I or -L argument to the compiler to find includes and libraries
5529 installed by another non-X11 pkg, use "${LOCALBASE}". The name LOCALBASE
5530 stems from FreeBSD, which installed all packages in /usr/local. As pkgsrc
5531 leaves /usr/local for the system administrator, this variable is a
5534 * X11BASE is where the actual X11 distribution (from xsrc, etc.) is
5535 installed. When looking for standard X11 includes (not those installed by a
5536 package), use "${X11BASE}".
5538 * X11-based packages are special in that they may be installed in either
5539 X11BASE or LOCALBASE.
5541 Usually, X11 packages should be installed under LOCALBASE whenever
5542 possible. Note that you will need to include ../../mk/x11.buildlink3.mk in
5543 them to request the presence of X11 and to get the right compilation flags.
5545 Even though, there are some packages that cannot be installed under
5546 LOCALBASE: those that come with app-defaults files. These packages are
5547 special and they must be placed under X11BASE. To accomplish this, set
5548 either USE_X11BASE or USE_IMAKE in your package.
5550 Some notes: If you need to find includes or libraries installed by a pkg
5551 that has USE_IMAKE or USE_X11BASE in its pkg Makefile, you need to look in
5552 both ${X11BASE} and ${LOCALBASE}. To force installation of all X11 packages
5553 in LOCALBASE, the pkgtools/xpkgwedge package is enabled by default.
5555 * X11PREFIX should be used to refer to the installed location of an X11
5556 package. X11PREFIX will be set to X11BASE if xpkgwedge is not installed,
5557 and to LOCALBASE if xpkgwedge is installed.
5559 * If xpkgwedge is installed, it is possible to have some packages installed
5560 in X11BASE and some in LOCALBASE. To determine the prefix of an installed
5561 package, the EVAL_PREFIX definition can be used. It takes pairs in the
5562 format "DIRNAME=<package>", and the make(1) variable DIRNAME will be set to
5563 the prefix of the installed package <package>, or "${X11PREFIX}" if the
5564 package is not installed.
5566 This is best illustrated by example.
5568 The following lines are taken from pkgsrc/wm/scwm/Makefile:
5570 EVAL_PREFIX+= GTKDIR=gtk+
5571 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --with-guile-prefix=${LOCALBASE:Q}
5572 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --with-gtk-prefix=${GTKDIR:Q}
5573 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --enable-multibyte
5575 Specific defaults can be defined for the packages evaluated using
5576 EVAL_PREFIX, by using a definition of the form:
5578 GTKDIR_DEFAULT= ${LOCALBASE}
5580 where GTKDIR corresponds to the first definition in the EVAL_PREFIX pair.
5582 * Within ${PREFIX}, packages should install files according to hier(7), with
5583 the exception that manual pages go into ${PREFIX}/man, not ${PREFIX}/share/
5586 17.3. Directories used during the build process
5588 When building a package, various directories are used to store source files,
5589 temporary files, pkgsrc-internal files, and so on. These directories are
5592 Some of the directory variables contain relative pathnames. There are two
5593 common base directories for these relative directories: PKGSRCDIR/PKGPATH is
5594 used for directories that are pkgsrc-specific. WRKSRC is used for directories
5595 inside the package itself.
5599 This is an absolute pathname that points to the pkgsrc root directory.
5600 Generally, you don't need it.
5604 This is an absolute pathname that points to the current package.
5608 This is a pathname relative to PKGSRCDIR that points to the current
5613 This is an absolute pathname pointing to the directory where all work takes
5614 place. The distfiles are extracted to this directory. It also contains
5615 temporary directories and log files used by the various pkgsrc frameworks,
5616 like buildlink or the wrappers.
5620 This is an absolute pathname pointing to the directory where the distfiles
5621 are extracted. It is usually a direct subdirectory of WRKDIR, and often
5622 it's the only directory entry that isn't hidden. This variable may be
5623 changed by a package Makefile.
5625 The CREATE_WRKDIR_SYMLINK definition takes either the value yes or no and
5626 defaults to no. It indicates whether a symbolic link to the WRKDIR is to be
5627 created in the pkgsrc entry's directory. If users would like to have their
5628 pkgsrc trees behave in a read-only manner, then the value of
5629 CREATE_WRKDIR_SYMLINK should be set to no.
5631 17.4. Running a phase
5633 You can run a particular phase by typing make phase, where phase is the name of
5634 the phase. This will automatically run all phases that are required for this
5635 phase. The default phase is build, that is, when you run make without
5636 parameters in a package directory, the package will be built, but not
5639 17.5. The fetch phase
5641 The first step in building a package is to fetch the distribution files
5642 (distfiles) from the sites that are providing them. This is the task of the
5645 17.5.1. What to fetch and where to get it from
5647 In simple cases, MASTER_SITES defines all URLs from where the distfile, whose
5648 name is derived from the DISTNAME variable, is fetched. The more complicated
5649 cases are described below.
5651 The variable DISTFILES specifies the list of distfiles that have to be fetched.
5652 Its value defaults to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}, so that most packages don't
5653 need to define it at all. EXTRACT_SUFX is .tar.gz by default, but can be
5654 changed freely. Note that if your package requires additional distfiles to the
5655 default one, you cannot just append the additional filenames using the +=
5656 operator, but you have write for example:
5658 DISTFILES= ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX} additional-files.tar.gz
5660 Each distfile is fetched from a list of sites, usually MASTER_SITES. If the
5661 package has multiple DISTFILES or multiple PATCHFILES from different sites, you
5662 can set SITES.distfile to the list of URLs where the file distfile (including
5663 the suffix) can be found.
5665 DISTFILES= ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}
5666 DISTFILES+= foo-file.tar.gz
5667 SITES.foo-file.tar.gz= \
5668 http://www.somewhere.com/somehow/ \
5669 http://www.somewhereelse.com/mirror/somehow/
5671 When actually fetching the distfiles, each item from MASTER_SITES or SITES.*
5672 gets the name of each distfile appended to it, without an intermediate slash.
5673 Therefore, all site values have to end with a slash or other separator
5674 character. This allows for example to set MASTER_SITES to a URL of a CGI script
5675 that gets the name of the distfile as a parameter. In this case, the definition
5678 MASTER_SITES= http://www.example.com/download.cgi?file=
5680 The exception to this rule are URLs starting with a dash. In that case the URL
5681 is taken as is, fetched and the result stored under the name of the distfile.
5683 There are some predefined values for MASTER_SITES, which can be used in
5684 packages. The names of the variables should speak for themselves.
5686 ${MASTER_SITE_APACHE}
5687 ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP}
5688 ${MASTER_SITE_CYGWIN}
5689 ${MASTER_SITE_DEBIAN}
5690 ${MASTER_SITE_FREEBSD}
5691 ${MASTER_SITE_FREEBSD_LOCAL}
5692 ${MASTER_SITE_GENTOO}
5693 ${MASTER_SITE_GNOME}
5695 ${MASTER_SITE_GNUSTEP}
5696 ${MASTER_SITE_IFARCHIVE}
5698 ${MASTER_SITE_MOZILLA}
5699 ${MASTER_SITE_MYSQL}
5700 ${MASTER_SITE_OPENOFFICE}
5701 ${MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN}
5702 ${MASTER_SITE_PGSQL}
5703 ${MASTER_SITE_R_CRAN}
5704 ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE}
5705 ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE_JP}
5706 ${MASTER_SITE_SUNSITE}
5708 ${MASTER_SITE_TEX_CTAN}
5709 ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB}
5710 ${MASTER_SITE_XEMACS}
5712 Some explanations for the less self-explaining ones: MASTER_SITE_BACKUP
5713 contains backup sites for packages that are maintained in ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/
5714 pub/pkgsrc/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR}. MASTER_SITE_LOCAL contains local package
5715 source distributions that are maintained in ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/
5716 distfiles/LOCAL_PORTS/.
5718 If you choose one of these predefined sites, you may want to specify a
5719 subdirectory of that site. Since these macros may expand to more than one
5720 actual site, you must use the following construct to specify a subdirectory:
5722 MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_GNU:=subdirectory/name/}
5723 MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE:=project_name/}
5725 Note the trailing slash after the subdirectory name.
5727 17.5.2. How are the files fetched?
5729 The fetch phase makes sure that all the distfiles exist in a local directory
5730 (DISTDIR, which can be set by the pkgsrc user). If the files do not exist, they
5731 are fetched using commands of the form
5733 ${FETCH_CMD} ${FETCH_BEFORE_ARGS} ${site}${file} ${FETCH_AFTER_ARGS}
5735 where ${site} varies through several possibilities in turn: first,
5736 MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE is tried, then the sites specified in either SITES.file if
5737 defined, else MASTER_SITES or PATCH_SITES, as applies, then finally the value
5738 of MASTER_SITE_BACKUP. The order of all except the first and the last can be
5739 optionally sorted by the user, via setting either MASTER_SORT_RANDOM, and
5740 MASTER_SORT_AWK or MASTER_SORT_REGEX.
5742 The specific command and arguments used depend on the FETCH_USING parameter.
5743 The example above is for FETCH_USING=custom.
5745 The distfiles mirror run by the NetBSD Foundation uses the mirror-distfiles
5746 target to mirror the distfiles, if they are freely distributable. Packages
5747 setting NO_SRC_ON_FTP (usually to "${RESTRICTED}") will not have their
5750 17.6. The checksum phase
5752 After the distfile(s) are fetched, their checksum is generated and compared
5753 with the checksums stored in the distinfo file. If the checksums don't match,
5754 the build is aborted. This is to ensure the same distfile is used for building,
5755 and that the distfile wasn't changed, e.g. by some malign force, deliberately
5756 changed distfiles on the master distribution site or network lossage.
5758 17.7. The extract phase
5760 When the distfiles are present on the local system, they need to be extracted,
5761 as they usually come in the form of some compressed archive format.
5763 By default, all DISTFILES are extracted. If you only need some of them, you can
5764 set the EXTRACT_ONLY variable to the list of those files.
5766 Extracting the files is usually done by a little program, mk/extract/extract,
5767 which already knows how to extract various archive formats, so most likely you
5768 will not need to change anything here. But if you need, the following variables
5771 EXTRACT_OPTS_{BIN,LHA,PAX,RAR,TAR,ZIP,ZOO}
5773 Use these variables to override the default options for an extract command,
5774 which are defined in mk/extract/extract.
5778 This variable can be set to bsdtar, gtar, nbtar (which is the default
5779 value), pax, or an absolute pathname pointing to the command with which tar
5780 archives should be extracted. It is preferred to choose bsdtar over gtar if
5781 NetBSD's pax-as-tar is not good enough.
5783 If the extract program doesn't serve your needs, you can also override the
5784 EXTRACT_CMD variable, which holds the command used for extracting the files.
5785 This command is executed in the ${WRKSRC} directory. During execution of this
5786 command, the shell variable extract_file holds the absolute pathname of the
5787 file that is going to be extracted.
5789 And if that still does not suffice, you can override the do-extract target in
5790 the package Makefile.
5792 17.8. The patch phase
5794 After extraction, all the patches named by the PATCHFILES, those present in the
5795 patches subdirectory of the package as well as in $LOCALPATCHES/$PKGPATH (e.g.
5796 /usr/local/patches/graphics/png) are applied. Patchfiles ending in .Z or .gz
5797 are uncompressed before they are applied, files ending in .orig or .rej are
5798 ignored. Any special options to patch(1) can be handed in PATCH_DIST_ARGS. See
5799 Section 11.3, "patches/*" for more details.
5801 By default patch(1) is given special args to make it fail if the patches apply
5802 with some lines of fuzz. Please fix (regen) the patches so that they apply
5803 cleanly. The rationale behind this is that patches that don't apply cleanly may
5804 end up being applied in the wrong place, and cause severe harm there.
5806 17.9. The tools phase
5808 This is covered in Chapter 18, Tools needed for building or running.
5810 17.10. The wrapper phase
5812 This phase creates wrapper programs for the compilers and linkers. The
5813 following variables can be used to tweak the wrappers.
5817 The command used to print progress messages. Does nothing by default. Set
5818 to ${ECHO} to see the progress messages.
5822 This variable can be set to yes (default) or no, depending on whether you
5823 want additional information in the wrapper log file.
5825 WRAPPER_UPDATE_CACHE
5827 This variable can be set to yes or no, depending on whether the wrapper
5828 should use its cache, which will improve the speed. The default value is
5829 yes, but is forced to no if the platform does not support it.
5831 WRAPPER_REORDER_CMDS
5833 A list of reordering commands. A reordering command has the form reorder:l:
5834 lib1:lib2. It ensures that that -llib1 occurs before -llib2.
5836 WRAPPER_TRANSFORM_CMDS
5838 A list of transformation commands. [TODO: investigate further]
5840 17.11. The configure phase
5842 Most pieces of software need information on the header files, system calls, and
5843 library routines which are available on the platform they run on. The process
5844 of determining this information is known as configuration, and is usually
5845 automated. In most cases, a script is supplied with the distfiles, and its
5846 invocation results in generation of header files, Makefiles, etc.
5848 If the package contains a configure script, this can be invoked by setting
5849 HAS_CONFIGURE to "yes". If the configure script is a GNU autoconf script, you
5850 should set GNU_CONFIGURE to "yes" instead. What happens in the configure phase
5853 .for d in ${CONFIGURE_DIRS}
5856 && env ${CONFIGURE_ENV} ${CONFIGURE_SCRIPT} ${CONFIGURE_ARGS}
5859 CONFIGURE_DIRS (default: ".") is a list of pathnames relative to WRKSRC. In
5860 each of these directories, the configure script is run with the environment
5861 CONFIGURE_ENV and arguments CONFIGURE_ARGS. The variables CONFIGURE_ENV,
5862 CONFIGURE_SCRIPT (default: "./configure") and CONFIGURE_ARGS may all be changed
5865 If the program uses an Imakefile for configuration, the appropriate steps can
5866 be invoked by setting USE_IMAKE to "yes". (If you only want the package
5867 installed in ${X11PREFIX} but xmkmf not being run, set USE_X11BASE instead.)
5868 You can add variables to xmkmf's environment by adding them to the SCRIPTS_ENV
5871 If the program uses cmake for configuration, the appropriate steps can be
5872 invoked by setting USE_CMAKE to "yes". You can add variables to cmake's
5873 environment by adding them to the CONFIGURE_ENV variable and arguments to cmake
5874 by adding them to the CMAKE_ARGS variable. The top directory argument is given
5875 by the CMAKE_ARG_PATH variable, that defaults to "." (relative to
5878 If there is no configure step at all, set NO_CONFIGURE to "yes".
5880 17.12. The build phase
5882 For building a package, a rough equivalent of the following code is executed.
5884 .for d in ${BUILD_DIRS}
5887 && env ${MAKE_ENV} \
5888 ${MAKE_PROGRAM} ${BUILD_MAKE_FLAGS} \
5893 BUILD_DIRS (default: ".") is a list of pathnames relative to WRKSRC. In each of
5894 these directories, MAKE_PROGRAM is run with the environment MAKE_ENV and
5895 arguments BUILD_MAKE_FLAGS. The variables MAKE_ENV, BUILD_MAKE_FLAGS, MAKE_FILE
5896 and BUILD_TARGET may all be changed by the package.
5898 The default value of MAKE_PROGRAM is "gmake" if USE_TOOLS contains "gmake", "
5899 make" otherwise. The default value of MAKE_FILE is "Makefile", and BUILD_TARGET
5902 If there is no build step at all, set NO_BUILD to "yes".
5904 17.13. The test phase
5908 17.14. The install phase
5910 Once the build stage has completed, the final step is to install the software
5911 in public directories, so users can access the programs and files.
5913 In the install phase, a rough equivalent of the following code is executed.
5914 Additionally, before and after this code, much magic is performed to do
5915 consistency checks, registering the package, and so on.
5917 .for d in ${INSTALL_DIRS}
5920 && env ${MAKE_ENV} \
5921 ${MAKE_PROGRAM} ${INSTALL_MAKE_FLAGS} \
5926 The variable's meanings are analogous to the ones in the build phase.
5927 INSTALL_DIRS defaults to BUILD_DIRS. INSTALL_TARGET is "install" by default,
5928 plus "install.man" if USE_IMAKE is defined and NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES is not
5931 In the install phase, the following variables are useful. They are all
5932 variations of the install(1) command that have the owner, group and permissions
5933 preset. INSTALL is the plain install command. The specialized variants,
5934 together with their intended use, are:
5938 directories that contain binaries
5942 directories that contain scripts
5946 directories that contain shared and static libraries
5950 directories that contain data files
5954 directories that contain man pages
5958 binaries that can be stripped from debugging symbols
5962 binaries that cannot be stripped
5970 shared and static libraries
5978 data files for games
5984 Some other variables are:
5988 A list of directories relative to PREFIX that are created by pkgsrc at the
5989 beginning of the install phase. The package is supposed to create all
5990 needed directories itself before installing files to it and list all other
5993 In the rare cases that a package shouldn't install anything, set NO_INSTALL to
5994 "yes". This is mostly relevant for packages in the regress category.
5996 17.15. The package phase
5998 Once the install stage has completed, a binary package of the installed files
5999 can be built. These binary packages can be used for quick installation without
6000 previous compilation, e.g. by the make bin-install or by using pkg_add.
6002 By default, the binary packages are created in ${PACKAGES}/All and symlinks are
6003 created in ${PACKAGES}/category, one for each category in the CATEGORIES
6004 variable. PACKAGES defaults to pkgsrc/packages.
6008 Once you're finished with a package, you can clean the work directory by
6009 running make clean. If you want to clean the work directories of all
6010 dependencies too, use make clean-depends.
6012 17.17. Other helpful targets
6016 For any of the main targets described in the previous section, two
6017 auxiliary targets exist with "pre-" and "post-" used as a prefix for the
6018 main target's name. These targets are invoked before and after the main
6019 target is called, allowing extra configuration or installation steps be
6020 performed from a package's Makefile, for example, which a program's
6021 configure script or install target omitted.
6025 Should one of the main targets do the wrong thing, and should there be no
6026 variable to fix this, you can redefine it with the do-* target. (Note that
6027 redefining the target itself instead of the do-* target is a bad idea, as
6028 the pre-* and post-* targets won't be called anymore, etc.) You will not
6029 usually need to do this.
6033 If you did a make install and you noticed some file was not installed
6034 properly, you can repeat the installation with this target, which will
6035 ignore the "already installed" flag.
6037 This is the default value of DEPENDS_TARGET except in the case of make
6038 update and make package, where the defaults are "package" and "update",
6043 This target does a pkg_delete(1) in the current directory, effectively
6044 de-installing the package. The following variables can be used to tune the
6049 Add a "-v" to the pkg_delete(1) command.
6053 Remove all packages that require (depend on) the given package. This
6054 can be used to remove any packages that may have been pulled in by a
6055 given package, e.g. if make deinstall DEINSTALLDEPENDS=1 is done in
6056 pkgsrc/x11/kde, this is likely to remove whole KDE. Works by adding "-R
6057 " to the pkg_delete(1) command line.
6061 Install a binary package from local disk and via FTP from a list of sites
6062 (see the BINPKG_SITES variable), and do a make package if no binary package
6063 is available anywhere. The arguments given to pkg_add can be set via
6064 BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS e.g., to do verbose operation, etc.
6068 This target causes the current package to be updated to the latest version.
6069 The package and all depending packages first get de-installed, then current
6070 versions of the corresponding packages get compiled and installed. This is
6071 similar to manually noting which packages are currently installed, then
6072 performing a series of make deinstall and make install (or whatever
6073 UPDATE_TARGET is set to) for these packages.
6075 You can use the "update" target to resume package updating in case a
6076 previous make update was interrupted for some reason. However, in this
6077 case, make sure you don't call make clean or otherwise remove the list of
6078 dependent packages in WRKDIR. Otherwise, you lose the ability to
6079 automatically update the current package along with the dependent packages
6082 Resuming an interrupted make update will only work as long as the package
6083 tree remains unchanged. If the source code for one of the packages to be
6084 updated has been changed, resuming make update will most certainly fail!
6086 The following variables can be used either on the command line or in
6087 mk.conf to alter the behaviour of make update:
6091 Install target to recursively use for the updated package and the
6092 dependent packages. Defaults to DEPENDS_TARGET if set, "install"
6093 otherwise for make update. Other good targets are "package" or "
6094 bin-install". Do not set this to "update" or you will get stuck in an
6099 Don't clean up after updating. Useful if you want to leave the work
6100 sources of the updated packages around for inspection or other
6101 purposes. Be sure you eventually clean up the source tree (see the "
6102 clean-update" target below) or you may run into troubles with old
6103 source code still lying around on your next make or make update.
6107 Deinstall each package before installing (making DEPENDS_TARGET). This
6108 may be necessary if the "clean-update" target (see below) was called
6109 after interrupting a running make update.
6113 Allows you to disable recursion and hardcode the target for packages.
6114 The default is "update" for the update target, facilitating a recursive
6115 update of prerequisite packages. Only set DEPENDS_TARGET if you want to
6116 disable recursive updates. Use UPDATE_TARGET instead to just set a
6117 specific target for each package to be installed during make update
6122 Clean the source tree for all packages that would get updated if make
6123 update was called from the current directory. This target should not be
6124 used if the current package (or any of its depending packages) have already
6125 been de-installed (e.g., after calling make update) or you may lose some
6126 packages you intended to update. As a rule of thumb: only use this target
6127 before the first time you run make update and only if you have a dirty
6128 package tree (e.g., if you used NOCLEAN).
6130 If you are unsure about whether your tree is clean, you can either perform
6131 a make clean at the top of the tree, or use the following sequence of
6132 commands from the directory of the package you want to update (before
6133 running make update for the first time, otherwise you lose all the packages
6134 you wanted to update!):
6137 # make clean CLEANDEPENDS=YES
6141 The following variables can be used either on the command line or in
6142 mk.conf to alter the behaviour of make clean-update:
6146 After make clean, do not reconstruct the list of directories to update
6147 for this package. Only use this if make update successfully installed
6148 all packages you wanted to update. Normally, this is done automatically
6149 on make update, but may have been suppressed by the NOCLEAN variable
6154 Update the installation of the current package. This differs from update in
6155 that it does not replace dependent packages. You will need to install
6156 pkgtools/pkg_tarup for this target to work.
6158 Be careful when using this target! There are no guarantees that dependent
6159 packages will still work, in particular they will most certainly break if
6160 you make replace a library package whose shared library major version
6161 changed between your installed version and the new one. For this reason,
6162 this target is not officially supported and only recommended for advanced
6167 This target invokes pkg_info(1) for the current package. You can use this
6168 to check which version of a package is installed.
6172 This is a top-level command, i.e. it should be used in the pkgsrc
6173 directory. It creates a database of all packages in the local pkgsrc tree,
6174 including dependencies, comment, maintainer, and some other useful
6175 information. Individual entries are created by running make describe in the
6176 packages' directories. This index file is saved as pkgsrc/INDEX. It can be
6177 displayed in verbose format by running make print-index. You can search in
6178 it with make search key=something. You can extract a list of all packages
6179 that depend on a particular one by running make show-deps PKG=somepackage.
6181 Running this command takes a very long time, some hours even on fast
6186 This target generates a README.html file, which can be viewed using a
6187 browser such as www/firefox or www/links. The generated files contain
6188 references to any packages which are in the PACKAGES directory on the local
6189 host. The generated files can be made to refer to URLs based on
6190 FTP_PKG_URL_HOST and FTP_PKG_URL_DIR. For example, if I wanted to generate
6191 README.html files which pointed to binary packages on the local machine, in
6192 the directory /usr/packages, set FTP_PKG_URL_HOST=file://localhost and
6193 FTP_PKG_URL_DIR=/usr/packages. The ${PACKAGES} directory and its
6194 subdirectories will be searched for all the binary packages.
6196 The target can be run at the toplevel or in category directories, in which
6197 case it descends recursively.
6201 This is a top-level command, run it in pkgsrc. Use this target to create a
6202 file README-all.html which contains a list of all packages currently
6203 available in the NetBSD Packages Collection, together with the category
6204 they belong to and a short description. This file is compiled from the
6205 pkgsrc/*/README.html files, so be sure to run this after a make readme.
6209 This is very much the same as the "readme" target (see above), but is to be
6210 used when generating a pkgsrc tree to be written to a CD-ROM. This target
6211 also produces README.html files, and can be made to refer to URLs based on
6212 CDROM_PKG_URL_HOST and CDROM_PKG_URL_DIR.
6216 This target shows which distfiles and patchfiles are needed to build the
6217 package (ALLFILES, which contains all DISTFILES and PATCHFILES, but not
6222 This target shows nothing if the package is not installed. If a version of
6223 this package is installed, but is not the version provided in this version
6224 of pkgsrc, then a warning message is displayed. This target can be used to
6225 show which of your installed packages are downlevel, and so the old
6226 versions can be deleted, and the current ones added.
6230 This target shows the directory in the pkgsrc hierarchy from which the
6231 package can be built and installed. This may not be the same directory as
6232 the one from which the package was installed. This target is intended to be
6233 used by people who may wish to upgrade many packages on a single host, and
6234 can be invoked from the top-level pkgsrc Makefile by using the "
6235 show-host-specific-pkgs" target.
6237 show-installed-depends
6239 This target shows which installed packages match the current package's
6240 DEPENDS. Useful if out of date dependencies are causing build problems.
6244 After a package is installed, check all its binaries and (on ELF platforms)
6245 shared libraries to see if they find the shared libs they need. Run by
6246 default if PKG_DEVELOPER is set in mk.conf.
6250 After a "make install" from a new or upgraded pkg, this prints out an
6251 attempt to generate a new PLIST from a find -newer work/.extract_done. An
6252 attempt is made to care for shared libs etc., but it is strongly
6253 recommended to review the result before putting it into PLIST. On upgrades,
6254 it's useful to diff the output of this command against an already existing
6257 If the package installs files via tar(1) or other methods that don't update
6258 file access times, be sure to add these files manually to your PLIST, as
6259 the "find -newer" command used by this target won't catch them!
6261 See Section 13.3, "Tweaking output of make print-PLIST" for more
6262 information on this target.
6266 Used to do bulk builds. If an appropriate binary package already exists, no
6267 action is taken. If not, this target will compile, install and package it
6268 (and its depends, if PKG_DEPENDS is set properly. See Section 7.3.1,
6269 "Configuration"). After creating the binary package, the sources, the
6270 just-installed package and its required packages are removed, preserving
6273 Beware that this target may deinstall all packages installed on a system!
6277 Used during bulk-installs to install required packages. If an up-to-date
6278 binary package is available, it will be installed via pkg_add(1). If not,
6279 make bulk-package will be executed, but the installed binary won't be
6282 A binary package is considered "up-to-date" to be installed via pkg_add(1)
6285 * None of the package's files (Makefile, ...) were modified since it was
6288 * None of the package's required (binary) packages were modified since it
6291 Beware that this target may deinstall all packages installed on a system!
6293 Chapter 18. Tools needed for building or running
6297 18.1. Tools for pkgsrc builds
6298 18.2. Tools needed by packages
6299 18.3. Tools provided by platforms
6300 18.4. Questions regarding the tools
6302 The USE_TOOLS definition is used both internally by pkgsrc and also for
6303 individual packages to define what commands are needed for building a package
6304 (like BUILD_DEPENDS) or for later run-time of an installed packaged (such as
6305 DEPENDS). If the native system provides an adequate tool, then in many cases, a
6306 pkgsrc package will not be used.
6308 When building a package, the replacement tools are made available in a
6309 directory (as symlinks or wrapper scripts) that is early in the executable
6310 search path. Just like the buildlink system, this helps with consistent builds.
6312 A tool may be needed to help build a specific package. For example, perl, GNU
6313 make (gmake) or yacc may be needed.
6315 Also a tool may be needed, for example, because the native system's supplied
6316 tool may be inefficient for building a package with pkgsrc. For example, a
6317 package may need GNU awk, bison (instead of yacc) or a better sed.
6319 The tools used by a package can be listed by running make show-tools.
6321 18.1. Tools for pkgsrc builds
6323 The default set of tools used by pkgsrc is defined in bsd.pkg.mk. This includes
6324 standard Unix tools, such as: cat, awk, chmod, test, and so on. These can be
6325 seen by running: make show-var VARNAME=USE_TOOLS.
6327 If a package needs a specific program to build then the USE_TOOLS variable can
6328 be used to define the tools needed.
6330 18.2. Tools needed by packages
6332 In the following examples, the :pkgsrc means to use the pkgsrc version and not
6333 the native version for a build dependency. And the :run means that it is used
6334 for a run-time dependencies also (and becomes a DEPENDS). The default is a
6335 build dependency which can be set with :build. (So in this example, it is the
6336 same as gmake:build and pkg-config:build.)
6338 USE_TOOLS+= mktemp:pkgsrc
6339 USE_TOOLS+= gmake perl:run pkg-config
6341 When using the tools framework, a TOOLS_PATH.foo variable is defined which
6342 contains the full path to the appropriate tool. For example, TOOLS_PATH.bash
6343 could be "/bin/bash" on Linux systems.
6345 If you always need a pkgsrc version of the tool at run-time, then just use
6348 18.3. Tools provided by platforms
6350 When improving or porting pkgsrc to a new platform, have a look at (or create)
6351 the corresponding platform specific make file fragment under pkgsrc/mk/tools/
6352 tools.${OPSYS}.mk which defines the name of the common tools. For example:
6354 .if exists(/usr/bin/bzcat)
6355 TOOLS_PLATFORM.bzcat?= /usr/bin/bzcat
6356 .elif exists(/usr/bin/bzip2)
6357 TOOLS_PLATFORM.bzcat?= /usr/bin/bzip2 -cd
6360 TOOLS_PLATFORM.true?= true # shell builtin
6362 18.4. Questions regarding the tools
6364 18.4.1. How do I add a new tool?
6365 18.4.2. How do I get a list of all available tools?
6366 18.4.3. How can I get a list of all the tools that a package is using while
6367 being built? I want to know whether it uses sed or not.
6369 18.4.1. How do I add a new tool?
6373 18.4.2. How do I get a list of all available tools?
6377 18.4.3. How can I get a list of all the tools that a package is using while
6378 being built? I want to know whether it uses sed or not.
6380 Currently, you can't. (TODO: But I want to be able to do it.)
6382 Chapter 19. Making your package work
6386 19.1. General operation
6388 19.1.1. Portability of packages
6389 19.1.2. How to pull in user-settable variables from mk.conf
6390 19.1.3. User interaction
6391 19.1.4. Handling licenses
6392 19.1.5. Restricted packages
6393 19.1.6. Handling dependencies
6394 19.1.7. Handling conflicts with other packages
6395 19.1.8. Packages that cannot or should not be built
6396 19.1.9. Packages which should not be deleted, once installed
6397 19.1.10. Handling packages with security problems
6398 19.1.11. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing
6400 19.1.12. Substituting variable text in the package files (the SUBST
6403 19.2. Fixing problems in the fetch phase
6405 19.2.1. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading
6406 19.2.2. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
6408 19.3. Fixing problems in the configure phase
6410 19.3.1. Shared libraries - libtool
6411 19.3.2. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
6412 19.3.3. GNU Autoconf/Automake
6414 19.4. Programming languages
6416 19.4.1. C, C++, and Fortran
6418 19.4.3. Packages containing perl scripts
6419 19.4.4. Other programming languages
6421 19.5. Fixing problems in the build phase
6423 19.5.1. Compiling C and C++ code conditionally
6424 19.5.2. How to handle compiler bugs
6425 19.5.3. Undefined reference to "..."
6426 19.5.4. Running out of memory
6428 19.6. Fixing problems in the install phase
6430 19.6.1. Creating needed directories
6431 19.6.2. Where to install documentation
6432 19.6.3. Installing highscore files
6433 19.6.4. Adding DESTDIR support to packages
6434 19.6.5. Packages with hardcoded paths to other interpreters
6435 19.6.6. Packages installing perl modules
6436 19.6.7. Packages installing info files
6437 19.6.8. Packages installing man pages
6438 19.6.9. Packages installing GConf data files
6439 19.6.10. Packages installing scrollkeeper/rarian data files
6440 19.6.11. Packages installing X11 fonts
6441 19.6.12. Packages installing GTK2 modules
6442 19.6.13. Packages installing SGML or XML data
6443 19.6.14. Packages installing extensions to the MIME database
6444 19.6.15. Packages using intltool
6445 19.6.16. Packages installing startup scripts
6446 19.6.17. Packages installing TeX modules
6447 19.6.18. Packages supporting running binaries in emulation
6448 19.6.19. Packages installing hicolor theme icons
6449 19.6.20. Packages installing desktop files
6451 19.7. Marking packages as having problems
6453 19.1. General operation
6455 19.1.1. Portability of packages
6457 One appealing feature of pkgsrc is that it runs on many different platforms. As
6458 a result, it is important to ensure, where possible, that packages in pkgsrc
6459 are portable. This chapter mentions some particular details you should pay
6460 attention to while working on pkgsrc.
6462 19.1.2. How to pull in user-settable variables from mk.conf
6464 The pkgsrc user can configure pkgsrc by overriding several variables in the
6465 file pointed to by MAKECONF, which is mk.conf by default. When you want to use
6466 those variables in the preprocessor directives of make(1) (for example .if or
6467 .for), you need to include the file ../../mk/bsd.prefs.mk before, which in turn
6468 loads the user preferences.
6470 But note that some variables may not be completely defined after ../../mk/
6471 bsd.prefs.mk has been included, as they may contain references to variables
6472 that are not yet defined. In shell commands this is no problem, since variables
6473 are actually macros, which are only expanded when they are used. But in the
6474 preprocessor directives mentioned above and in dependency lines (of the form
6475 target: dependencies) the variables are expanded at load time.
6479 Currently there is no exhaustive list of all variables that tells you whether
6480 they can be used at load time or only at run time, but it is in preparation.
6482 19.1.3. User interaction
6484 Occasionally, packages require interaction from the user, and this can be in a
6487 * When fetching the distfiles, some packages require user interaction such as
6488 entering username/password or accepting a license on a web page.
6490 * When extracting the distfiles, some packages may ask for passwords.
6492 * help to configure the package before it is built
6494 * help during the build process
6496 * help during the installation of a package
6498 The INTERACTIVE_STAGE definition is provided to notify the pkgsrc mechanism of
6499 an interactive stage which will be needed, and this should be set in the
6500 package's Makefile, e.g.:
6502 INTERACTIVE_STAGE= build
6505 Multiple interactive stages can be specified:
6507 INTERACTIVE_STAGE= configure install
6510 The user can then decide to skip this package by setting the BATCH variable.
6512 19.1.4. Handling licenses
6514 Authors of software can choose the licence under which software can be copied.
6515 This is due to copyright law, and reasons for license choices are outside the
6516 scope of pkgsrc. The pkgsrc system recognizes that there are a number of
6517 licenses which some users may find objectionable or difficult or impossible to
6518 comply with. The Free Software Foundation has declared some licenses "Free",
6519 and the Open Source Initiative has a definition of "Open Source". The pkgsrc
6520 system, as a policy choice, does not label packages which have licenses that
6521 are Free or Open Source. However, packages without a license meeting either of
6522 those tests are labeled with a license tag denoting the license. Note that a
6523 package with no license to copy trivially does not meet either the Free or Open
6526 For packages which are not Free or Open Source, pkgsrc will not build the
6527 package unless the user has indicated to pkgsrc that packages with that
6528 particular license may be built. Note that this documentation avoids the term
6529 "accepted the license". The pkgsrc system is merely providing a mechanism to
6530 avoid accidentally building a package with a non-free license; judgement and
6531 responsibility remain with the user. (Installation of binary packages are not
6532 currently subject to this mechanism; this is a bug.)
6534 One might want to only install packages with a BSD license, or the GPL, and not
6535 the other. The free licenses are added to the default ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES
6536 variable. The user can override the default by setting the ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES
6537 variable with "=" instead of "+=". The licenses accepted by default are:
6540 gnu-gpl-v2 gnu-lgpl-v2
6541 gnu-gpl-v3 gnu-lgpl-v3
6542 original-bsd modified-bsd
6549 The license tag mechanism is intended to address copyright-related issues
6550 surrounding building, installing and using a package, and not to address
6551 redistribution issues (see RESTRICTED and NO_SRC_ON_FTP, etc.). Packages with
6552 redistribution restrictions should set these tags.
6554 Denoting that a package may be copied according to a particular license is done
6555 by placing the license in pkgsrc/licenses and setting the LICENSE variable to a
6556 string identifying the license, e.g. in graphics/xv:
6561 When trying to build, the user will get a notice that the package is covered by
6562 a license which has not been placed in the ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES variable:
6565 ===> xv-3.10anb9 has an unacceptable license: xv-license.
6566 ===> To view the license, enter "/usr/bin/make show-license".
6567 ===> To indicate acceptance, add this line to your /etc/mk.conf:
6568 ===> ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES+=xv-license
6572 The license can be viewed with make show-license, and if the user so chooses,
6573 the line printed above can be added to mk.conf to convey to pkgsrc that it
6574 should not in the future fail because of that license:
6576 ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES+=xv-license
6579 When adding a package with a new license, the license text should be added to
6580 pkgsrc/licenses for displaying. A list of known licenses can be seen in this
6583 When the license changes (in a way other than formatting), please make sure
6584 that the new license has a different name (e.g., append the version number if
6585 it exists, or the date). Just because a user told pkgsrc to build programs
6586 under a previous version of a license does not mean that pkgsrc should build
6587 programs under the new licenses. The higher-level point is that pkgsrc does not
6588 evaluate licenses for reasonableness; the only test is a mechanistic test of
6589 whether a particular text has been approved by either of two bodies.
6591 The use of LICENSE=shareware, LICENSE=no-commercial-use, and similar language
6592 is deprecated because it does not crisply refer to a particular license text.
6593 Another problem with such usage is that it does not enable a user to tell
6594 pkgsrc to proceed for a single package without also telling pkgsrc to proceed
6595 for all packages with that tag.
6597 19.1.5. Restricted packages
6599 Some licenses restrict how software may be re-distributed. Because a license
6600 tag is required unless the package is Free or Open Source, all packages with
6601 restrictions should have license tags. By declaring the restrictions, package
6602 tools can automatically refrain from e.g. placing binary packages on FTP sites.
6604 There are four restrictions that may be encoded, which are the cross product of
6605 sources (distfiles) and binaries not being placed on FTP sites and CD-ROMs.
6606 Because this is rarely the exact language in any license, and because non-Free
6607 licenses tend to be different from each other, pkgsrc adopts a definition of
6608 FTP and CD-ROM. Pkgsrc uses "FTP" to mean that the source or binary file should
6609 not be made available over the Internet at no charge. Pkgsrc uses "CD-ROM" to
6610 mean that the source or binary may not be made available on some kind of media,
6611 together with other source and binary packages, and which is sold for a
6612 distribution charge.
6614 In order to encode these restrictions, the package system defines five make
6615 variables that can be set to note these restrictions:
6619 This variable should be set whenever a restriction exists (regardless of
6620 its kind). Set this variable to a string containing the reason for the
6621 restriction. It should be understood that those wanting to understand the
6622 restriction will have to read the license, and perhaps seek advice of
6627 Binaries may not be placed on CD-ROM containing other binary packages, for
6628 which a distribution charge may be made. In this case, set this variable to
6633 Binaries may not made available on the Internet without charge. In this
6634 case, set this variable to ${RESTRICTED}. If this variable is set, binary
6635 packages will not be included on ftp.NetBSD.org.
6639 Distfiles may not be placed on CD-ROM, together with other distfiles, for
6640 which a fee may be charged. In this case, set this variable to $
6645 Distfiles may not made available via FTP at no charge. In this case, set
6646 this variable to ${RESTRICTED}. If this variable is set, the distfile(s)
6647 will not be mirrored on ftp.NetBSD.org.
6649 19.1.6. Handling dependencies
6651 Your package may depend on some other package being present - and there are
6652 various ways of expressing this dependency. pkgsrc supports the BUILD_DEPENDS
6653 and DEPENDS definitions, the USE_TOOLS definition, as well as dependencies via
6654 buildlink3.mk, which is the preferred way to handle dependencies, and which
6655 uses the variables named above. See Chapter 14, Buildlink methodology for more
6658 The basic difference between the two variables is as follows: The DEPENDS
6659 definition registers that pre-requisite in the binary package so it will be
6660 pulled in when the binary package is later installed, whilst the BUILD_DEPENDS
6661 definition does not, marking a dependency that is only needed for building the
6664 This means that if you only need a package present whilst you are building, it
6665 should be noted as a BUILD_DEPENDS.
6667 The format for a BUILD_DEPENDS and a DEPENDS definition is:
6669 <pre-req-package-name>:../../<category>/<pre-req-package>
6672 Please note that the "pre-req-package-name" may include any of the wildcard
6673 version numbers recognized by pkg_info(1).
6675 1. If your package needs another package's binaries or libraries to build or
6676 run, and if that package has a buildlink3.mk file available, use it:
6678 .include "../../graphics/jpeg/buildlink3.mk"
6681 2. If your package needs binaries from another package to build, use the
6682 BUILD_DEPENDS definition:
6684 BUILD_DEPENDS+= scons-[0-9]*:../../devel/scons
6687 3. If your package needs a library with which to link and there is no
6688 buildlink3.mk file available, create one. Using DEPENDS won't be sufficient
6689 because the include files and libraries will be hidden from the compiler.
6691 4. If your package needs some executable to be able to run correctly and if
6692 there's no buildlink3.mk file, this is specified using the DEPENDS
6693 variable. The print/lyx package needs to be able to execute the latex
6694 binary from the teTeX package when it runs, and that is specified:
6696 DEPENDS+= teTeX-[0-9]*:../../print/teTeX
6699 5. You can use wildcards in package dependencies. Note that such wildcard
6700 dependencies are retained when creating binary packages. The dependency is
6701 checked when installing the binary package and any package which matches
6702 the pattern will be used. Wildcard dependencies should be used with care.
6704 The "-[0-9]*" should be used instead of "-*" to avoid potentially ambiguous
6705 matches such as "tk-postgresql" matching a "tk-*" DEPENDS.
6707 Wildcards can also be used to specify that a package will only build
6708 against a certain minimum version of a pre-requisite:
6710 DEPENDS+= ImageMagick>=6.0:../../graphics/ImageMagick
6713 This means that the package will build using version 6.0 of ImageMagick or
6714 newer. Such a dependency may be warranted if, for example, the command line
6715 options of an executable have changed.
6717 If you need to depend on minimum versions of libraries, see the buildlink
6718 section of the pkgsrc guide.
6720 For security fixes, please update the package vulnerabilities file. See
6721 Section 19.1.10, "Handling packages with security problems" for more
6724 If your package needs files from another package to build, add the relevant
6725 distribution files to DISTFILES, so they will be extracted automatically. See
6726 the print/ghostscript package for an example. (It relies on the jpeg sources
6727 being present in source form during the build.)
6729 19.1.7. Handling conflicts with other packages
6731 Your package may conflict with other packages a user might already have
6732 installed on his system, e.g. if your package installs the same set of files as
6733 another package in the pkgsrc tree.
6735 In this case you can set CONFLICTS to a space-separated list of packages
6736 (including version string) your package conflicts with.
6738 For example, x11/Xaw3d and x11/Xaw-Xpm install the same shared library, thus
6739 you set in pkgsrc/x11/Xaw3d/Makefile:
6741 CONFLICTS= Xaw-Xpm-[0-9]*
6744 and in pkgsrc/x11/Xaw-Xpm/Makefile:
6746 CONFLICTS= Xaw3d-[0-9]*
6749 Packages will automatically conflict with other packages with the name prefix
6750 and a different version string. "Xaw3d-1.5" e.g. will automatically conflict
6751 with the older version "Xaw3d-1.3".
6753 19.1.8. Packages that cannot or should not be built
6755 There are several reasons why a package might be instructed to not build under
6756 certain circumstances. If the package builds and runs on most platforms, the
6757 exceptions should be noted with NOT_FOR_PLATFORM. If the package builds and
6758 runs on a small handful of platforms, set ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM instead. Both
6759 ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM and NOT_FOR_PLATFORM are OS triples (OS-version-platform)
6760 that can use glob-style wildcards.
6762 Some packages are tightly bound to a specific version of an operating system,
6763 e.g. LKMs or sysutils/lsof. Such binary packages are not backwards compatible
6764 with other versions of the OS, and should be uploaded to a version specific
6765 directory on the FTP server. Mark these packages by setting OSVERSION_SPECIFIC
6766 to "yes". This variable is not currently used by any of the package system
6767 internals, but may be used in the future.
6769 If the package should be skipped (for example, because it provides
6770 functionality already provided by the system), set PKG_SKIP_REASON to a
6771 descriptive message. If the package should fail because some preconditions are
6772 not met, set PKG_FAIL_REASON to a descriptive message.
6774 19.1.9. Packages which should not be deleted, once installed
6776 To ensure that a package may not be deleted, once it has been installed, the
6777 PKG_PRESERVE definition should be set in the package Makefile. This will be
6778 carried into any binary package that is made from this pkgsrc entry. A "
6779 preserved" package will not be deleted using pkg_delete(1) unless the "-f"
6782 19.1.10. Handling packages with security problems
6784 When a vulnerability is found, this should be noted in localsrc/security/
6785 advisories/pkg-vulnerabilities, and after committing that file, use make upload
6786 in the same directory to update the file on ftp.NetBSD.org.
6788 After fixing the vulnerability by a patch, its PKGREVISION should be increased
6789 (this is of course not necessary if the problem is fixed by using a newer
6790 release of the software).
6792 Also, if the fix should be applied to the stable pkgsrc branch, be sure to
6793 submit a pullup request!
6795 Binary packages already on ftp.NetBSD.org will be handled semi-automatically by
6798 19.1.11. How to handle incrementing versions when fixing an existing package
6800 When making fixes to an existing package it can be useful to change the version
6801 number in PKGNAME. To avoid conflicting with future versions by the original
6802 author, a "nb1", "nb2", ... suffix can be used on package versions by setting
6803 PKGREVISION=1 (2, ...). The "nb" is treated like a "." by the package tools.
6810 will result in a PKGNAME of "foo-17.42nb9". If you want to use the original
6811 value of PKGNAME without the "nbX" suffix, e.g. for setting DIST_SUBDIR, use
6814 When a new release of the package is released, the PKGREVISION should be
6815 removed, e.g. on a new minor release of the above package, things should be
6821 PKGREVISION should be incremented for any non-trivial change in the resulting
6822 binary package. Without a PKGREVISION bump, someone with the previous version
6823 installed has no way of knowing that their package is out of date. Thus,
6824 changes without increasing PKGREVISION are essentially labeled "this is so
6825 trivial that no reasonable person would want to upgrade", and this is the rough
6826 test for when increasing PKGREVISION is appropriate. Examples of changes that
6827 do not merit increasing PKGREVISION are:
6829 * Changing HOMEPAGE, MAINTAINER, OWNER, or comments in Makefile.
6831 * Changing build variables if the resulting binary package is the same.
6835 * Adding PKG_OPTIONS if the default options don't change.
6837 Examples of changes that do merit an increase to PKGREVISION include:
6841 * Changes or additions to a patch file
6843 * Changes to the PLIST
6845 * A dependency is changed or renamed.
6847 PKGREVISION must also be incremented when dependencies have ABI changes.
6849 19.1.12. Substituting variable text in the package files (the SUBST framework)
6851 When you want to replace the same text in multiple files or when the
6852 replacement text varies, patches alone cannot help. This is where the SUBST
6853 framework comes in. It provides an easy-to-use interface for replacing text in
6856 SUBST_CLASSES+= fix-paths
6857 SUBST_STAGE.fix-paths= pre-configure
6858 SUBST_MESSAGE.fix-paths= Fixing absolute paths.
6859 SUBST_FILES.fix-paths= src/*.c
6860 SUBST_FILES.fix-paths+= scripts/*.sh
6861 SUBST_SED.fix-paths= -e 's,"/usr/local,"${PREFIX},g'
6862 SUBST_SED.fix-paths+= -e 's,"/var/log,"${VARBASE}/log,g'
6865 SUBST_CLASSES is a list of identifiers that are used to identify the different
6866 SUBST blocks that are defined. The SUBST framework is heavily used by pkgsrc,
6867 so it is important to always use the += operator with this variable. Otherwise
6868 some substitutions may be skipped.
6870 The remaining variables of each SUBST block are parameterized with the
6871 identifier from the first line (fix-paths in this case.) They can be seen as
6872 parameters to a function call.
6874 SUBST_STAGE.* specifies the stage at which the replacement will take place. All
6875 combinations of pre-, do- and post- together with a phase name are possible,
6876 though only few are actually used. Most commonly used are post-patch and
6877 pre-configure. Of these two, pre-configure should be preferred because then it
6878 is possible to run bmake patch and have the state after applying the patches
6879 but before making any other changes. This is especially useful when you are
6880 debugging a package in order to create new patches for it. Similarly,
6881 post-build is preferred over pre-install, because the install phase should
6882 generally be kept as simple as possible. When you use post-build, you have the
6883 same files in the working directory that will be installed later, so you can
6884 check if the substitution has succeeded.
6886 SUBST_MESSAGE.* is an optional text that is printed just before the
6887 substitution is done.
6889 SUBST_FILES.* is the list of shell globbing patterns that specifies the files
6890 in which the substitution will take place. The patterns are interpreted
6891 relatively to the WRKSRC directory.
6893 SUBST_SED.* is a list of arguments to sed(1) that specify the actual
6894 substitution. Every sed command should be prefixed with -e, so that all SUBST
6895 blocks look uniform.
6897 There are some more variables, but they are so seldomly used that they are only
6898 documented in the mk/subst.mk file.
6900 19.2. Fixing problems in the fetch phase
6902 19.2.1. Packages whose distfiles aren't available for plain downloading
6904 If you need to download from a dynamic URL you can set DYNAMIC_MASTER_SITES and
6905 a make fetch will call files/getsite.sh with the name of each file to download
6906 as an argument, expecting it to output the URL of the directory from which to
6907 download it. graphics/ns-cult3d is an example of this usage.
6909 If the download can't be automated, because the user must submit personal
6910 information to apply for a password, or must pay for the source, or whatever,
6911 you can set FETCH_MESSAGE to a list of lines that are displayed to the user
6912 before aborting the build. Example:
6914 FETCH_MESSAGE= "Please download the files"
6915 FETCH_MESSAGE+= " "${DISTFILES:Q}
6916 FETCH_MESSAGE+= "manually from "${MASTER_SITES:Q}"."
6919 19.2.2. How to handle modified distfiles with the 'old' name
6921 Sometimes authors of a software package make some modifications after the
6922 software was released, and they put up a new distfile without changing the
6923 package's version number. If a package is already in pkgsrc at that time, the
6924 checksum will no longer match. The contents of the new distfile should be
6925 compared against the old one before changing anything, to make sure the
6926 distfile was really updated on purpose, and that no trojan horse or so crept
6927 in. Please mention that the distfiles were compared and what was found in your
6928 commit message. Then, the correct way to work around this is to set DIST_SUBDIR
6929 to a unique directory name, usually based on PKGNAME_NOREV. All DISTFILES and
6930 PATCHFILES for this package will be put in that subdirectory of the local
6931 distfiles directory. (See Section 19.1.11, "How to handle incrementing versions
6932 when fixing an existing package" for more details.) In case this happens more
6933 often, PKGNAME can be used (thus including the nbX suffix) or a date stamp can
6934 be appended, like ${PKGNAME_NOREV}-YYYYMMDD. Do not forget regenerating the
6935 distinfo file after that, since it contains the DIST_SUBDIR path in the
6936 filenames. Also increase the PKGREVISION if the installed package is different.
6937 Furthermore, a mail to the package's authors seems appropriate telling them
6938 that changing distfiles after releases without changing the file names is not
6941 19.3. Fixing problems in the configure phase
6943 19.3.1. Shared libraries - libtool
6945 pkgsrc supports many different machines, with different object formats like
6946 a.out and ELF, and varying abilities to do shared library and dynamic loading
6947 at all. To accompany this, varying commands and options have to be passed to
6948 the compiler, linker, etc. to get the Right Thing, which can be pretty annoying
6949 especially if you don't have all the machines at your hand to test things. The
6950 devel/libtool pkg can help here, as it just "knows" how to build both static
6951 and dynamic libraries from a set of source files, thus being
6952 platform-independent.
6954 Here's how to use libtool in a package in seven simple steps:
6956 1. Add USE_LIBTOOL=yes to the package Makefile.
6958 2. For library objects, use "${LIBTOOL} --mode=compile ${CC}" in place of "$
6959 {CC}". You could even add it to the definition of CC, if only libraries are
6960 being built in a given Makefile. This one command will build both PIC and
6961 non-PIC library objects, so you need not have separate shared and
6962 non-shared library rules.
6964 3. For the linking of the library, remove any "ar", "ranlib", and "ld
6965 -Bshareable" commands, and instead use:
6967 ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link \
6968 ${CC} -o ${.TARGET:.a=.la} \
6970 -rpath ${PREFIX}/lib \
6971 -version-info major:minor
6974 Note that the library is changed to have a .la extension, and the objects
6975 are changed to have a .lo extension. Change OBJS as necessary. This
6976 automatically creates all of the .a, .so.major.minor, and ELF symlinks (if
6977 necessary) in the build directory. Be sure to include "-version-info",
6978 especially when major and minor are zero, as libtool will otherwise strip
6979 off the shared library version.
6981 From the libtool manual:
6983 So, libtool library versions are described by three integers:
6986 The most recent interface number that this library implements.
6989 The implementation number of the CURRENT interface.
6992 The difference between the newest and oldest interfaces that
6993 this library implements. In other words, the library implements
6994 all the interface numbers in the range from number `CURRENT -
6997 If two libraries have identical CURRENT and AGE numbers, then the
6998 dynamic linker chooses the library with the greater REVISION number.
7001 The "-release" option will produce different results for a.out and ELF
7002 (excluding symlinks) in only one case. An ELF library of the form "
7003 libfoo-release.so.x.y" will have a symlink of "libfoo.so.x.y" on an a.out
7004 platform. This is handled automatically.
7006 The "-rpath argument" is the install directory of the library being built.
7008 In the PLIST, include only the .la file, the other files will be added
7011 4. When linking shared object (.so) files, i.e. files that are loaded via
7012 dlopen(3), NOT shared libraries, use "-module -avoid-version" to prevent
7013 them getting version tacked on.
7015 The PLIST file gets the foo.so entry.
7017 5. When linking programs that depend on these libraries before they are
7018 installed, preface the cc(1) or ld(1) line with "${LIBTOOL} --mode=link",
7019 and it will find the correct libraries (static or shared), but please be
7020 aware that libtool will not allow you to specify a relative path in -L
7021 (such as "-L../somelib"), because it expects you to change that argument to
7022 be the .la file. e.g.
7024 ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link ${CC} -o someprog -L../somelib -lsomelib
7027 should be changed to:
7029 ${LIBTOOL} --mode=link ${CC} -o someprog ../somelib/somelib.la
7032 and it will do the right thing with the libraries.
7034 6. When installing libraries, preface the install(1) or cp(1) command with "$
7035 {LIBTOOL} --mode=install", and change the library name to .la. e.g.
7037 ${LIBTOOL} --mode=install ${BSD_INSTALL_LIB} ${SOMELIB:.a=.la} ${PREFIX}/lib
7040 This will install the static .a, shared library, any needed symlinks, and
7043 7. In your PLIST, include only the .la file (this is a change from previous
7046 19.3.2. Using libtool on GNU packages that already support libtool
7048 Add USE_LIBTOOL=yes to the package Makefile. This will override the package's
7049 own libtool in most cases. For older libtool using packages, libtool is made by
7050 ltconfig script during the do-configure step; you can check the libtool script
7051 location by doing make configure; find work*/ -name libtool.
7053 LIBTOOL_OVERRIDE specifies which libtool scripts, relative to WRKSRC, to
7054 override. By default, it is set to "libtool */libtool */*/libtool". If this
7055 does not match the location of the package's libtool script(s), set it as
7058 If you do not need *.a static libraries built and installed, then use
7059 SHLIBTOOL_OVERRIDE instead.
7061 If your package makes use of the platform-independent library for loading
7062 dynamic shared objects, that comes with libtool (libltdl), you should include
7063 devel/libltdl/buildlink3.mk.
7065 Some packages use libtool incorrectly so that the package may not work or build
7066 in some circumstances. Some of the more common errors are:
7068 * The inclusion of a shared object (-module) as a dependent library in an
7069 executable or library. This in itself isn't a problem if one of two things
7072 1. The shared object is named correctly, i.e. libfoo.la, not foo.la
7074 2. The -dlopen option is used when linking an executable.
7076 * The use of libltdl without the correct calls to initialisation routines.
7077 The function lt_dlinit() should be called and the macro
7078 LTDL_SET_PRELOADED_SYMBOLS included in executables.
7080 19.3.3. GNU Autoconf/Automake
7082 If a package needs GNU autoconf or automake to be executed to regenerate the
7083 configure script and Makefile.in makefile templates, then they should be
7084 executed in a pre-configure target.
7086 For packages that need only autoconf:
7088 AUTOCONF_REQD= 2.50 # if default version is not good enough
7089 USE_TOOLS+= autoconf # use "autoconf213" for autoconf-2.13
7093 cd ${WRKSRC} && autoconf
7098 and for packages that need automake and autoconf:
7100 AUTOMAKE_REQD= 1.7.1 # if default version is not good enough
7101 USE_TOOLS+= automake # use "automake14" for automake-1.4
7105 set -e; cd ${WRKSRC}; \
7106 aclocal; autoheader; automake -a --foreign -i; autoconf
7111 Packages which use GNU Automake will almost certainly require GNU Make.
7113 There are times when the configure process makes additional changes to the
7114 generated files, which then causes the build process to try to re-execute the
7115 automake sequence. This is prevented by touching various files in the configure
7116 stage. If this causes problems with your package you can set AUTOMAKE_OVERRIDE=
7117 NO in the package Makefile.
7119 19.4. Programming languages
7121 19.4.1. C, C++, and Fortran
7123 Compilers for the C, C++, and Fortran languages comes with the NetBSD base
7124 system. By default, pkgsrc assumes that a package is written in C and will hide
7125 all other compilers (via the wrapper framework, see Chapter 14, Buildlink
7128 To declare which language's compiler a package needs, set the USE_LANGUAGES
7129 variable. Allowed values currently are "c", "c++", and "fortran" (and any
7130 combination). The default is "c". Packages using GNU configure scripts, even if
7131 written in C++, usually need a C compiler for the configure phase.
7135 If a program is written in Java, use the Java framework in pkgsrc. The package
7136 must include ../../mk/java-vm.mk. This Makefile fragment provides the following
7139 * USE_JAVA defines if a build dependency on the JDK is added. If USE_JAVA is
7140 set to "run", then there is only a runtime dependency on the JDK. The
7141 default is "yes", which also adds a build dependency on the JDK.
7143 * Set USE_JAVA2 to declare that a package needs a Java2 implementation. The
7144 supported values are "yes", "1.4", and "1.5". "yes" accepts any Java2
7145 implementation, "1.4" insists on versions 1.4 or above, and "1.5" only
7146 accepts versions 1.5 or above. This variable is not set by default.
7148 * PKG_JAVA_HOME is automatically set to the runtime location of the used Java
7149 implementation dependency. It may be used to set JAVA_HOME to a good value
7150 if the program needs this variable to be defined.
7152 19.4.3. Packages containing perl scripts
7154 If your package contains interpreted perl scripts, add "perl" to the USE_TOOLS
7155 variable and set REPLACE_PERL to ensure that the proper interpreter path is
7156 set. REPLACE_PERL should contain a list of scripts, relative to WRKSRC, that
7157 you want adjusted. Every occurrence of */bin/perl will be replaced with the
7158 full path to the perl executable.
7160 If a particular version of perl is needed, set the PERL5_REQD variable to the
7161 version number. The default is "5.0".
7163 See Section 19.6.6, "Packages installing perl modules" for information about
7164 handling perl modules.
7166 19.4.4. Other programming languages
7168 Currently, there is no special handling for other languages in pkgsrc. If a
7169 compiler package provides a buildlink3.mk file, include that, otherwise just
7170 add a (build) dependency on the appropriate compiler package.
7172 19.5. Fixing problems in the build phase
7174 The most common failures when building a package are that some platforms do not
7175 provide certain header files, functions or libraries, or they provide the
7176 functions in a library that the original package author didn't know. To work
7177 around this, you can rewrite the source code in most cases so that it does not
7178 use the missing functions or provides a replacement function.
7180 19.5.1. Compiling C and C++ code conditionally
7182 If a package already comes with a GNU configure script, the preferred way to
7183 fix the build failure is to change the configure script, not the code. In the
7184 other cases, you can utilize the C preprocessor, which defines certain macros
7185 depending on the operating system and hardware architecture it compiles for.
7186 These macros can be queried using for example #if defined(__i386). Almost every
7187 operating system, hardware architecture and compiler has its own macro. For
7188 example, if the macros __GNUC__, __i386__ and __NetBSD__ are all defined, you
7189 know that you are using NetBSD on an i386 compatible CPU, and your compiler is
7192 The list of the following macros for hardware and operating system depends on
7193 the compiler that is used. For example, if you want to conditionally compile
7194 code on Solaris, don't use __sun__, as the SunPro compiler does not define it.
7197 19.5.1.1. C preprocessor macros to identify the operating system
7199 To distinguish between 4.4 BSD-derived systems and the rest of the world, you
7200 should use the following code.
7202 #include <sys/param.h>
7203 #if (defined(BSD) && BSD >= 199306)
7204 /* BSD-specific code goes here */
7206 /* non-BSD-specific code goes here */
7209 If this distinction is not fine enough, you can also test for the following
7213 DragonFly __DragonFly__
7215 IRIX __sgi (TODO: get a definite source for this)
7216 Linux linux, __linux, __linux__
7221 19.5.1.2. C preprocessor macros to identify the hardware architecture
7223 i386 i386, __i386, __i386__
7225 SPARC sparc, __sparc
7227 19.5.1.3. C preprocessor macros to identify the compiler
7229 GCC __GNUC__ (major version), __GNUC_MINOR__
7230 MIPSpro _COMPILER_VERSION (0x741 for MIPSpro 7.41)
7231 SunPro __SUNPRO_C (0x570 for Sun C 5.7)
7232 SunPro C++ __SUNPRO_CC (0x580 for Sun C++ 5.8)
7234 19.5.2. How to handle compiler bugs
7236 Some source files trigger bugs in the compiler, based on combinations of
7237 compiler version and architecture and almost always relation to optimisation
7238 being enabled. Common symptoms are gcc internal errors or never finishing
7241 Typically, a workaround involves testing the MACHINE_ARCH and compiler version,
7242 disabling optimisation for that combination of file, MACHINE_ARCH and compiler,
7243 and documenting it in pkgsrc/doc/HACKS. See that file for a number of examples.
7245 19.5.3. Undefined reference to "..."
7247 This error message often means that a package did not link to a shared library
7248 it needs. The following functions are known to cause this error message over
7251 +-----------------------------------------------------+
7252 | Function |Library |Affected platforms|
7253 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7254 |accept, bind, connect |-lsocket|Solaris |
7255 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7256 |crypt |-lcrypt |DragonFly, NetBSD |
7257 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7258 |dlopen, dlsym |-ldl |Linux |
7259 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7260 |gethost* |-lnsl |Solaris |
7261 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7262 |inet_aton |-lresolv|Solaris |
7263 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7264 |nanosleep, sem_*, timer_*|-lrt |Solaris |
7265 |-------------------------+--------+------------------|
7266 |openpty |-lutil |Linux |
7267 +-----------------------------------------------------+
7269 To fix these linker errors, it is often sufficient to say LIBS.OperatingSystem+
7270 = -lfoo to the package Makefile and then say bmake clean; bmake.
7272 19.5.3.1. Special issue: The SunPro compiler
7274 When you are using the SunPro compiler, there is another possibility. That
7275 compiler cannot handle the following code:
7277 extern int extern_func(int);
7282 return extern_func(x);
7290 It generates the code for inline_func even if that function is never used. This
7291 code then refers to extern_func, which can usually not be resolved. To solve
7292 this problem you can try to tell the package to disable inlining of functions.
7294 19.5.4. Running out of memory
7296 Sometimes packages fail to build because the compiler runs into an operating
7297 system specific soft limit. With the UNLIMIT_RESOURCES variable pkgsrc can be
7298 told to unlimit the resources. Currently, the allowed values are "datasize" and
7299 "stacksize" (or both). Setting this variable is similar to running the shell
7300 builtin ulimit command to raise the maximum data segment size or maximum stack
7301 size of a process, respectively, to their hard limits.
7303 19.6. Fixing problems in the install phase
7305 19.6.1. Creating needed directories
7307 The BSD-compatible install supplied with some operating systems cannot create
7308 more than one directory at a time. As such, you should call ${INSTALL_*_DIR}
7311 ${INSTALL_DATA_DIR} ${PREFIX}/dir1
7312 ${INSTALL_DATA_DIR} ${PREFIX}/dir2
7315 You can also just append "dir1 dir2" to the INSTALLATION_DIRS variable, which
7316 will automatically do the right thing.
7318 19.6.2. Where to install documentation
7320 In general, documentation should be installed into ${PREFIX}/share/doc/$
7321 {PKGBASE} or ${PREFIX}/share/doc/${PKGNAME} (the latter includes the version
7322 number of the package).
7324 Many modern packages using GNU autoconf allow to set the directory where HTML
7325 documentation is installed with the "--with-html-dir" option. Sometimes using
7326 this flag is needed because otherwise the documentation ends up in ${PREFIX}/
7327 share/doc/html or other places.
7329 An exception to the above is that library API documentation generated with the
7330 textproc/gtk-doc tools, for use by special browsers (devhelp) should be left at
7331 their default location, which is ${PREFIX}/share/gtk-doc. Such documentation
7332 can be recognized from files ending in .devhelp or .devhelp2. (It is also
7333 acceptable to install such files in ${PREFIX}/share/doc/${PKGBASE} or ${PREFIX}
7334 /share/doc/${PKGNAME}; the .devhelp* file must be directly in that directory
7335 then, no additional subdirectory level is allowed in this case. This is usually
7336 achieved by using "--with-html-dir=${PREFIX}/share/doc". ${PREFIX}/share/
7337 gtk-doc is preferred though.)
7339 19.6.3. Installing highscore files
7341 Certain packages, most of them in the games category, install a score file that
7342 allows all users on the system to record their highscores. In order for this to
7343 work, the binaries need to be installed setgid and the score files owned by the
7344 appropriate group and/or owner (traditionally the "games" user/group). The
7345 following variables, documented in more detail in mk/defaults/mk.conf, control
7346 this behaviour: SETGIDGAME, GAMEDATAMODE, GAMEGRP, GAMEMODE, GAMEOWN.
7348 Note that per default, setgid installation of games is disabled; setting
7349 SETGIDGAME=YES will set all the other variables accordingly.
7351 A package should therefore never hard code file ownership or access permissions
7352 but rely on INSTALL_GAME and INSTALL_GAME_DATA to set these correctly.
7354 19.6.4. Adding DESTDIR support to packages
7356 DESTDIR support means that a package installs into a staging directory, not the
7357 final location of the files. Then a binary package is created which can be used
7358 for installation as usual. There are two ways: Either the package must install
7359 as root ("destdir") or the package can install as non-root user ("user-destdir"
7362 * PKG_DESTDIR_SUPPORT has to be set to "destdir" or "user-destdir". If
7363 bsd.prefs.mk is included in the Makefile, PKG_DESTDIR_SUPPORT needs to be
7364 set before the inclusion.
7366 * All installation operations have to be prefixed with ${DESTDIR}.
7368 * automake gets this DESTDIR mostly right automatically. Many manual rules
7369 and pre/post-install often are incorrect; fix them.
7371 * If files are installed with special owner/group use SPECIAL_PERMS.
7373 * In general, packages should support UNPRIVILEGED to be able to use DESTDIR.
7375 19.6.5. Packages with hardcoded paths to other interpreters
7377 Your package may also contain scripts with hardcoded paths to other
7378 interpreters besides (or as well as) perl. To correct the full pathname to the
7379 script interpreter, you need to set the following definitions in your Makefile
7380 (we shall use tclsh in this example):
7382 REPLACE_INTERPRETER+= tcl
7383 REPLACE.tcl.old= .*/bin/tclsh
7384 REPLACE.tcl.new= ${PREFIX}/bin/tclsh
7385 REPLACE_FILES.tcl= # list of tcl scripts which need to be fixed,
7386 # relative to ${WRKSRC}, just as in REPLACE_PERL
7391 Before March 2006, these variables were called _REPLACE.* and _REPLACE_FILES.*.
7393 19.6.6. Packages installing perl modules
7395 Makefiles of packages providing perl5 modules should include the Makefile
7396 fragment ../../lang/perl5/module.mk. It provides a do-configure target for the
7397 standard perl configuration for such modules as well as various hooks to tune
7398 this configuration. See comments in this file for details.
7400 Perl5 modules will install into different places depending on the version of
7401 perl used during the build process. To address this, pkgsrc will append lines
7402 to the PLIST corresponding to the files listed in the installed .packlist file
7403 generated by most perl5 modules. This is invoked by defining PERL5_PACKLIST to
7404 a space-separated list of paths to packlist files, e.g.:
7406 PERL5_PACKLIST= ${PERL5_SITEARCH}/auto/Pg/.packlist
7409 The variables PERL5_SITELIB, PERL5_SITEARCH, and PERL5_ARCHLIB represent the
7410 three locations in which perl5 modules may be installed, and may be used by
7411 perl5 packages that don't have a packlist. These three variables are also
7412 substituted for in the PLIST.
7414 19.6.7. Packages installing info files
7416 Some packages install info files or use the "makeinfo" or "install-info"
7417 commands. INFO_FILES should be defined in the package Makefile so that INSTALL
7418 and DEINSTALL scripts will be generated to handle registration of the info
7419 files in the Info directory file. The "install-info" command used for the info
7420 files registration is either provided by the system, or by a special purpose
7421 package automatically added as dependency if needed.
7423 PKGINFODIR is the directory under ${PREFIX} where info files are primarily
7424 located. PKGINFODIR defaults to "info" and can be overridden by the user.
7426 The info files for the package should be listed in the package PLIST; however
7427 any split info files need not be listed.
7429 A package which needs the "makeinfo" command at build time must add "makeinfo"
7430 to USE_TOOLS in its Makefile. If a minimum version of the "makeinfo" command is
7431 needed it should be noted with the TEXINFO_REQD variable in the package
7432 Makefile. By default, a minimum version of 3.12 is required. If the system does
7433 not provide a makeinfo command or if it does not match the required minimum, a
7434 build dependency on the devel/gtexinfo package will be added automatically.
7436 The build and installation process of the software provided by the package
7437 should not use the install-info command as the registration of info files is
7438 the task of the package INSTALL script, and it must use the appropriate
7441 To achieve this goal, the pkgsrc infrastructure creates overriding scripts for
7442 the install-info and makeinfo commands in a directory listed early in PATH.
7444 The script overriding install-info has no effect except the logging of a
7445 message. The script overriding makeinfo logs a message and according to the
7446 value of TEXINFO_REQD either runs the appropriate makeinfo command or exit on
7449 19.6.8. Packages installing man pages
7451 All packages that install manual pages should install them into the same
7452 directory, so that there is one common place to look for them. In pkgsrc, this
7453 place is ${PREFIX}/${PKGMANDIR}, and this expression should be used in
7454 packages. The default for PKGMANDIR is "man". Another often-used value is "
7459 The support for a custom PKGMANDIR is far from complete.
7461 The PLIST files can just use man/ as the top level directory for the man page
7462 file entries, and the pkgsrc framework will convert as needed. In all other
7463 places, the correct PKGMANDIR must be used.
7465 Packages that are configured with GNU_CONFIGURE set as "yes", by default will
7466 use the ./configure --mandir switch to set where the man pages should be
7467 installed. The path is GNU_CONFIGURE_MANDIR which defaults to ${PREFIX}/$
7470 Packages that use GNU_CONFIGURE but do not use --mandir, can set
7471 CONFIGURE_HAS_MANDIR to "no". Or if the ./configure script uses a non-standard
7472 use of --mandir, you can set GNU_CONFIGURE_MANDIR as needed.
7474 See Section 13.5, "Man page compression" for information on installation of
7475 compressed manual pages.
7477 19.6.9. Packages installing GConf data files
7479 If a package installs .schemas or .entries files, used by GConf, you need to
7480 take some extra steps to make sure they get registered in the database:
7482 1. Include ../../devel/GConf/schemas.mk instead of its buildlink3.mk file.
7483 This takes care of rebuilding the GConf database at installation and
7484 deinstallation time, and tells the package where to install GConf data
7485 files using some standard configure arguments. It also disallows any access
7486 to the database directly from the package.
7488 2. Ensure that the package installs its .schemas files under ${PREFIX}/share/
7489 gconf/schemas. If they get installed under ${PREFIX}/etc, you will need to
7490 manually patch the package.
7492 3. Check the PLIST and remove any entries under the etc/gconf directory, as
7493 they will be handled automatically. See Section 9.13, "How do I change the
7494 location of configuration files?" for more information.
7496 4. Define the GCONF_SCHEMAS variable in your Makefile with a list of all
7497 .schemas files installed by the package, if any. Names must not contain any
7498 directories in them.
7500 5. Define the GCONF_ENTRIES variable in your Makefile with a list of all
7501 .entries files installed by the package, if any. Names must not contain any
7502 directories in them.
7504 19.6.10. Packages installing scrollkeeper/rarian data files
7506 If a package installs .omf files, used by scrollkeeper/rarian, you need to take
7507 some extra steps to make sure they get registered in the database:
7509 1. Include ../../mk/omf-scrollkeeper.mk instead of rarian's buildlink3.mk
7510 file. This takes care of rebuilding the scrollkeeper database at
7511 installation and deinstallation time, and disallows any access to it
7512 directly from the package.
7514 2. Check the PLIST and remove any entries under the libdata/scrollkeeper
7515 directory, as they will be handled automatically.
7517 3. Remove the share/omf directory from the PLIST. It will be handled by
7518 rarian. (make print-PLIST does this automatically.)
7520 19.6.11. Packages installing X11 fonts
7522 If a package installs font files, you will need to rebuild the fonts database
7523 in the directory where they get installed at installation and deinstallation
7524 time. This can be automatically done by using the pkginstall framework.
7526 You can list the directories where fonts are installed in the FONTS_DIRS.type
7527 variables, where type can be one of "ttf", "type1" or "x11". Also make sure
7528 that the database file fonts.dir is not listed in the PLIST.
7530 Note that you should not create new directories for fonts; instead use the
7531 standard ones to avoid that the user needs to manually configure his X server
7534 19.6.12. Packages installing GTK2 modules
7536 If a package installs GTK2 immodules or loaders, you need to take some extra
7537 steps to get them registered in the GTK2 database properly:
7539 1. Include ../../x11/gtk2/modules.mk instead of its buildlink3.mk file. This
7540 takes care of rebuilding the database at installation and deinstallation
7543 2. Set GTK2_IMMODULES=YES if your package installs GTK2 immodules.
7545 3. Set GTK2_LOADERS=YES if your package installs GTK2 loaders.
7547 4. Patch the package to not touch any of the GTK2 databases directly. These
7550 * libdata/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders
7552 * libdata/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules
7554 5. Check the PLIST and remove any entries under the libdata/gtk-2.0 directory,
7555 as they will be handled automatically.
7557 19.6.13. Packages installing SGML or XML data
7559 If a package installs SGML or XML data files that need to be registered in
7560 system-wide catalogs (like DTDs, sub-catalogs, etc.), you need to take some
7563 1. Include ../../textproc/xmlcatmgr/catalogs.mk in your Makefile, which takes
7564 care of registering those files in system-wide catalogs at installation and
7565 deinstallation time.
7567 2. Set SGML_CATALOGS to the full path of any SGML catalogs installed by the
7570 3. Set XML_CATALOGS to the full path of any XML catalogs installed by the
7573 4. Set SGML_ENTRIES to individual entries to be added to the SGML catalog.
7574 These come in groups of three strings; see xmlcatmgr(1) for more
7575 information (specifically, arguments recognized by the 'add' action). Note
7576 that you will normally not use this variable.
7578 5. Set XML_ENTRIES to individual entries to be added to the XML catalog. These
7579 come in groups of three strings; see xmlcatmgr(1) for more information
7580 (specifically, arguments recognized by the 'add' action). Note that you
7581 will normally not use this variable.
7583 19.6.14. Packages installing extensions to the MIME database
7585 If a package provides extensions to the MIME database by installing .xml files
7586 inside ${PREFIX}/share/mime/packages, you need to take some extra steps to
7587 ensure that the database is kept consistent with respect to these new files:
7589 1. Include ../../databases/shared-mime-info/mimedb.mk (avoid using the
7590 buildlink3.mk file from this same directory, which is reserved for
7591 inclusion from other buildlink3.mk files). It takes care of rebuilding the
7592 MIME database at installation and deinstallation time, and disallows any
7593 access to it directly from the package.
7595 2. Check the PLIST and remove any entries under the share/mime directory,
7596 except for files saved under share/mime/packages. The former are handled
7597 automatically by the update-mime-database program, but the latter are
7598 package-dependent and must be removed by the package that installed them in
7601 3. Remove any share/mime/* directories from the PLIST. They will be handled by
7602 the shared-mime-info package.
7604 19.6.15. Packages using intltool
7606 If a package uses intltool during its build, add intltool to the USE_TOOLS,
7607 which forces it to use the intltool package provided by pkgsrc, instead of the
7608 one bundled with the distribution file.
7610 This tracks intltool's build-time dependencies and uses the latest available
7611 version; this way, the package benefits of any bug fixes that may have appeared
7612 since it was released.
7614 19.6.16. Packages installing startup scripts
7616 If a package contains a rc.d script, it won't be copied into the startup
7617 directory by default, but you can enable it, by adding the option
7618 PKG_RCD_SCRIPTS=YES in mk.conf. This option will copy the scripts into /etc/
7619 rc.d when a package is installed, and it will automatically remove the scripts
7620 when the package is deinstalled.
7622 19.6.17. Packages installing TeX modules
7624 If a package installs TeX packages into the texmf tree, the ls-R database of
7625 the tree needs to be updated.
7629 Except the main TeX packages such as kpathsea, packages should install files
7630 into ${PREFIX}/share/texmf-dist, not ${PREFIX}/share/texmf.
7632 1. Include ../../print/kpathsea/texmf.mk. This takes care of rebuilding the
7633 ls-R database at installation and deinstallation time.
7635 2. If your package installs files into a texmf tree other than the one at $
7636 {PREFIX}/share/texmf-dist, set TEX_TEXMF_DIRS to the list of all texmf
7637 trees that need database update.
7639 If your package also installs font map files that need to be registered
7640 using updmap, include ../../print/texlive-tetex/map.mk and set
7641 TEX_MAP_FILES and/or TEX_MIXEDMAP_FILES to the list of all such font map
7642 files. Then updmap will be run automatically at installation/deinstallation
7643 to enable/disable font map files for TeX output drivers.
7645 3. Make sure that none of ls-R databases are included in PLIST, as they will
7646 be removed only by the teTeX-bin package.
7648 19.6.18. Packages supporting running binaries in emulation
7650 There are some packages that provide libraries and executables for running
7651 binaries from a one operating system on a different one (if the latter supports
7652 it). One example is running Linux binaries on NetBSD.
7654 The pkgtools/rpm2pkg helps in extracting and packaging Linux rpm packages.
7656 The CHECK_SHLIBS can be set to no to avoid the check-shlibs target, which tests
7657 if all libraries for each installed executable can be found by the dynamic
7658 linker. Since the standard dynamic linker is run, this fails for emulation
7659 packages, because the libraries used by the emulation are not in the standard
7662 19.6.19. Packages installing hicolor theme icons
7664 If a package installs images under the share/icons/hicolor and/or updates the
7665 share/icons/hicolor/icon-theme.cache database, you need to take some extra
7666 steps to make sure that the shared theme directory is handled appropriately and
7667 that the cache database is rebuilt:
7669 1. Include ../../graphics/hicolor-icon-theme/buildlink3.mk.
7671 2. Check the PLIST and remove the entry that refers to the theme cache.
7673 3. Ensure that the PLIST does not remove the shared icon directories from the
7674 share/icons/hicolor hierarchy because they will be handled automatically.
7676 The best way to verify that the PLIST is correct with respect to the last two
7677 points is to regenerate it using make print-PLIST.
7679 19.6.20. Packages installing desktop files
7681 If a package installs .desktop files under share/applications and these include
7682 MIME information, you need to take extra steps to ensure that they are
7683 registered into the MIME database:
7685 1. Include ../../sysutils/desktop-file-utils/desktopdb.mk.
7687 2. Check the PLIST and remove the entry that refers to the share/applications/
7688 mimeinfo.cache file. It will be handled automatically.
7690 The best way to verify that the PLIST is correct with respect to the last point
7691 is to regenerate it using make print-PLIST.
7693 19.7. Marking packages as having problems
7695 In some cases one does not have the time to solve a problem immediately. In
7696 this case, one can plainly mark a package as broken. For this, one just sets
7697 the variable BROKEN to the reason why the package is broken (similar to the
7698 RESTRICTED variable). A user trying to build the package will immediately be
7699 shown this message, and the build will not be even tried.
7701 BROKEN packages are removed from pkgsrc in irregular intervals.
7703 Chapter 20. Debugging
7705 To check out all the gotchas when building a package, here are the steps that I
7706 do in order to get a package working. Please note this is basically the same as
7707 what was explained in the previous sections, only with some debugging aids.
7709 * Be sure to set PKG_DEVELOPER=yes in mk.conf.
7711 * Install pkgtools/url2pkg, create a directory for a new package, change into
7712 it, then run url2pkg:
7714 % mkdir /usr/pkgsrc/category/examplepkg
7715 % cd /usr/pkgsrc/category/examplepkg
7716 % url2pkg http://www.example.com/path/to/distfile.tar.gz
7718 * Edit the Makefile as requested.
7720 * Fill in the DESCR file
7722 * Run make configure
7724 * Add any dependencies glimpsed from documentation and the configure step to
7725 the package's Makefile.
7727 * Make the package compile, doing multiple rounds of
7730 % pkgvi ${WRKSRC}/some/file/that/does/not/compile
7733 % mv ${WRKDIR}/.newpatches/* patches
7737 Doing this step as non-root user will ensure that no files are modified
7738 that shouldn't be, especially during the build phase. mkpatches, patchdiff
7739 and pkgvi are from the pkgtools/pkgdiff package.
7741 * Look at the Makefile, fix if necessary; see Section 11.1, "Makefile".
7746 # make print-PLIST >PLIST
7751 You usually need to be root to do this. Look if there are any files left:
7755 If this reveals any files that are missing in PLIST, add them.
7757 * Now that the PLIST is OK, install the package again and make a binary
7763 * Delete the installed package:
7765 # pkg_delete examplepkg
7767 * Repeat the above make print-PLIST command, which shouldn't find anything
7772 * Reinstall the binary package:
7774 # pkg_add .../examplepkg.tgz
7776 * Play with it. Make sure everything works.
7778 * Run pkglint from pkgtools/pkglint, and fix the problems it reports:
7782 * Submit (or commit, if you have cvs access); see Chapter 21, Submitting and
7785 Chapter 21. Submitting and Committing
7789 21.1. Submitting binary packages
7790 21.2. Submitting source packages (for non-NetBSD-developers)
7791 21.3. General notes when adding, updating, or removing packages
7792 21.4. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
7793 21.5. Updating a package to a newer version
7794 21.6. Renaming a package in pkgsrc
7795 21.7. Moving a package in pkgsrc
7797 21.1. Submitting binary packages
7799 Our policy is that we accept binaries only from pkgsrc developers to guarantee
7800 that the packages don't contain any trojan horses etc. This is not to annoy
7801 anyone but rather to protect our users! You're still free to put up your
7802 home-made binary packages and tell the world where to get them. NetBSD
7803 developers doing bulk builds and wanting to upload them please see
7804 Section 7.3.8, "Uploading results of a bulk build".
7806 21.2. Submitting source packages (for non-NetBSD-developers)
7808 First, check that your package is complete, compiles and runs well; see
7809 Chapter 20, Debugging and the rest of this document. Next, generate an
7810 uuencoded gzipped tar(1) archive that contains all files that make up the
7811 package. Finally, send this package to the pkgsrc bug tracking system, either
7812 with the send-pr(1) command, or if you don't have that, go to the web page
7813 http://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html, which contains some instructions
7814 and a link to a form where you can submit packages. The sysutils/gtk-send-pr
7815 package is also available as a substitute for either of the above two tools.
7817 In the form of the problem report, the category should be "pkg", the synopsis
7818 should include the package name and version number, and the description field
7819 should contain a short description of your package (contents of the COMMENT
7820 variable or DESCR file are OK). The uuencoded package data should go into the "
7823 If you want to submit several packages, please send a separate PR for each one,
7824 it's easier for us to track things that way.
7826 Alternatively, you can also import new packages into pkgsrc-wip ("pkgsrc
7827 work-in-progress"); see the homepage at http://pkgsrc-wip.sourceforge.net/ for
7830 21.3. General notes when adding, updating, or removing packages
7832 Please note all package additions, updates, moves, and removals in pkgsrc/doc/
7833 CHANGES-YYYY. It's very important to keep this file up to date and conforming
7834 to the existing format, because it will be used by scripts to automatically
7835 update pages on www.NetBSD.org and other sites. Additionally, check the pkgsrc/
7836 doc/TODO file and remove the entry for the package you updated or removed, in
7837 case it was mentioned there.
7839 When the PKGREVISION of a package is bumped, the change should appear in pkgsrc
7840 /doc/CHANGES-YYYY if it is security related or otherwise relevant. Mass bumps
7841 that result from a dependency being updated should not be mentioned. In all
7842 other cases it's the developer's decision.
7844 There is a make target that helps in creating proper CHANGES-YYYY entries: make
7845 changes-entry. It uses the optional CTYPE and NETBSD_LOGIN_NAME variables. The
7846 general usage is to first make sure that your CHANGES-YYYY file is up-to-date
7847 (to avoid having to resolve conflicts later-on) and then to cd to the package
7848 directory. For package updates, make changes-entry is enough. For new packages,
7849 or package moves or removals, set the CTYPE variable on the command line to
7850 "Added", "Moved", or "Removed". You can set NETBSD_LOGIN_NAME in mk.conf if
7851 your local login name is not the same as your NetBSD login name. The target
7852 also automatically removes possibly existing entries for the package in the
7853 TODO file. Don't forget to commit the changes, e.g. by using make
7854 changes-entry-commit! If you are not using a checkout directly from
7855 cvs.NetBSD.org, but e.g. a local copy of the repository, you can set
7856 USE_NETBSD_REPO=yes. This makes the cvs commands use the main repository.
7858 21.4. Committing: Importing a package into CVS
7860 This section is only of interest for pkgsrc developers with write access to the
7861 pkgsrc repository. Please remember that cvs imports files relative to the
7862 current working directory, and that the pathname that you give the cvs import
7863 command is so that it knows where to place the files in the repository. Newly
7864 created packages should be imported with a vendor tag of "TNF" and a release
7865 tag of "pkgsrc-base", e.g:
7867 $ cd .../pkgsrc/category/pkgname
7868 $ cvs import pkgsrc/category/pkgname TNF pkgsrc-base
7870 Remember to move the directory from which you imported out of the way, or cvs
7871 will complain the next time you "cvs update" your source tree. Also don't
7872 forget to add the new package to the category's Makefile.
7874 The commit message of the initial import should include part of the DESCR file,
7875 so people reading the mailing lists know what the package is/does.
7877 For new packages, "cvs import" is preferred to "cvs add" because the former
7878 gets everything with a single command, and provides a consistent tag.
7880 21.5. Updating a package to a newer version
7882 Please always put a concise, appropriate and relevant summary of the changes
7883 between old and new versions into the commit log when updating a package. There
7884 are various reasons for this:
7886 * A URL is volatile, and can change over time. It may go away completely or
7887 its information may be overwritten by newer information.
7889 * Having the change information between old and new versions in our CVS
7890 repository is very useful for people who use either cvs or anoncvs.
7892 * Having the change information between old and new versions in our CVS
7893 repository is very useful for people who read the pkgsrc-changes mailing
7894 list, so that they can make tactical decisions about when to upgrade the
7897 Please also recognize that, just because a new version of a package has been
7898 released, it should not automatically be upgraded in the CVS repository. We
7899 prefer to be conservative in the packages that are included in pkgsrc -
7900 development or beta packages are not really the best thing for most places in
7901 which pkgsrc is used. Please use your judgement about what should go into
7902 pkgsrc, and bear in mind that stability is to be preferred above new and
7903 possibly untested features.
7905 21.6. Renaming a package in pkgsrc
7907 Renaming packages is not recommended.
7909 When renaming packages, be sure to fix any references to old name in other
7910 Makefiles, options, buildlink files, etc.
7912 Also When renaming a package, please define SUPERSEDES to the package name and
7913 dewey version pattern(s) of the previous package name. This may be repeated for
7914 multiple renames. The new package would be an exact replacement.
7916 Note that "successor" in the CHANGES-YYYY file doesn't necessarily mean that it
7917 supersedes, as that successor may not be an exact replacement but is a
7918 suggestion for the replaced functionality.
7920 21.7. Moving a package in pkgsrc
7922 It is preferred that packages are not renamed or moved, but if needed please
7925 1. Make a copy of the directory somewhere else.
7927 2. Remove all CVS dirs.
7929 Alternatively to the first two steps you can also do:
7931 % cvs -d user@cvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot export -D today pkgsrc/category/package
7933 and use that for further work.
7935 3. Fix CATEGORIES and any DEPENDS paths that just did "../package" instead of
7936 "../../category/package".
7938 4. In the modified package's Makefile, consider setting PREV_PKGPATH to the
7939 previous category/package pathname. The PREV_PKGPATH can be used by tools
7940 for doing an update using pkgsrc building; for example, it can search the
7941 pkg_summary(5) database for PREV_PKGPATH (if no SUPERSEDES) and then use
7942 the corresponding new PKGPATH for that moved package. Note that it may have
7943 multiple matches, so the tool should also check on the PKGBASE too. The
7944 PREV_PKGPATH probably has no value unless SUPERSEDES is not set, i.e.
7945 PKGBASE stays the same.
7947 5. cvs import the modified package in the new place.
7949 6. Check if any package depends on it:
7952 % grep /package */*/Makefile* */*/buildlink*
7954 7. Fix paths in packages from step 5 to point to new location.
7956 8. cvs rm (-f) the package at the old location.
7958 9. Remove from oldcategory/Makefile.
7960 10. Add to newcategory/Makefile.
7962 11. Commit the changed and removed files:
7964 % cvs commit oldcategory/package oldcategory/Makefile newcategory/Makefile
7966 (and any packages from step 5, of course).
7968 Chapter 22. Frequently Asked Questions
7970 This section contains the answers to questions that may arise when you are
7971 writing a package. If you don't find your question answered here, first have a
7972 look in the other chapters, and if you still don't have the answer, ask on the
7973 pkgsrc-users mailing list.
7975 22.1. What is the difference between MAKEFLAGS, .MAKEFLAGS and MAKE_FLAGS?
7976 22.2. What is the difference between MAKE, GMAKE and MAKE_PROGRAM?
7977 22.3. What is the difference between CC, PKG_CC and PKGSRC_COMPILER?
7978 22.4. What is the difference between BUILDLINK_LDFLAGS, BUILDLINK_LDADD and
7980 22.5. Why does make show-var VARNAME=BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo say it's empty?
7981 22.6. What does ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE:=package/} mean? I don't understand
7983 22.7. Which mailing lists are there for package developers?
7984 22.8. Where is the pkgsrc documentation?
7985 22.9. I have a little time to kill. What shall I do?
7987 22.1. What is the difference between MAKEFLAGS, .MAKEFLAGS and MAKE_FLAGS?
7989 MAKEFLAGS are the flags passed to the pkgsrc-internal invocations of make
7990 (1), while MAKE_FLAGS are the flags that are passed to the MAKE_PROGRAM
7991 when building the package. [FIXME: What is .MAKEFLAGS for?]
7993 22.2. What is the difference between MAKE, GMAKE and MAKE_PROGRAM?
7995 MAKE is the path to the make(1) program that is used in the pkgsrc
7996 infrastructure. GMAKE is the path to GNU Make, but you need to say
7997 USE_TOOLS+=gmake to use that. MAKE_PROGRAM is the path to the Make
7998 program that is used for building the package.
8000 22.3. What is the difference between CC, PKG_CC and PKGSRC_COMPILER?
8002 CC is the path to the real C compiler, which can be configured by the
8003 pkgsrc user. PKG_CC is the path to the compiler wrapper. PKGSRC_COMPILER
8004 is not a path to a compiler, but the type of compiler that should be
8005 used. See mk/compiler.mk for more information about the latter variable.
8007 22.4. What is the difference between BUILDLINK_LDFLAGS, BUILDLINK_LDADD and
8012 22.5. Why does make show-var VARNAME=BUILDLINK_PREFIX.foo say it's empty?
8014 For optimization reasons, some variables are only available in the "
8015 wrapper" phase and later. To "simulate" the wrapper phase, append
8016 PKG_PHASE=wrapper to the above command.
8018 22.6. What does ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE:=package/} mean? I don't understand
8021 The := is not really an assignment operator, like you might expect at
8022 first sight. Instead, it is a degenerate form of ${LIST:old_string=
8023 new_string}, which is documented in the make(1) man page and which you
8024 may have seen as in ${SRCS:.c=.o}. In the case of MASTER_SITE_*,
8025 old_string is the empty string and new_string is package/. That's where
8026 the : and the = fall together.
8028 22.7. Which mailing lists are there for package developers?
8032 This is a list for technical discussions related to pkgsrc
8033 development, e.g. soliciting feedback for changes to pkgsrc
8034 infrastructure, proposed new features, questions related to porting
8035 pkgsrc to a new platform, advice for maintaining a package, patches
8036 that affect many packages, help requests moved from pkgsrc-users when
8037 an infrastructure bug is found, etc.
8041 All bug reports in category "pkg" sent with send-pr(1) appear here.
8042 Please do not report your bugs here directly; use one of the other
8045 22.8. Where is the pkgsrc documentation?
8047 There are many places where you can find documentation about pkgsrc:
8049 * The pkgsrc guide (this document) is a collection of chapters that
8050 explain large parts of pkgsrc, but some chapters tend to be outdated.
8051 Which ones they are is hard to say.
8053 * On the mailing list archives (see http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/), you
8054 can find discussions about certain features, announcements of new
8055 parts of the pkgsrc infrastructure and sometimes even announcements
8056 that a certain feature has been marked as obsolete. The benefit here
8057 is that each message has a date appended to it.
8059 * Many of the files in the mk/ directory start with a comment that
8060 describes the purpose of the file and how it can be used by the
8061 pkgsrc user and package authors. An easy way to find this
8062 documentation is to run bmake help.
8064 * The CVS log messages are a rich source of information, but they tend
8065 to be highly abbreviated, especially for actions that occur often.
8066 Some contain a detailed description of what has changed, but they are
8067 geared towards the other pkgsrc developers, not towards an average
8068 pkgsrc user. They also only document changes, so if you don't know
8069 what has been before, these messages may not be worth too much to
8072 * Some parts of pkgsrc are only "implicitly documented", that is the
8073 documentation exists only in the mind of the developer who wrote the
8074 code. To get this information, use the cvs annotate command to see
8075 who has written it and ask on the tech-pkg mailing list, so that
8076 others can find your questions later (see above). To be sure that the
8077 developer in charge reads the mail, you may CC him or her.
8079 22.9. I have a little time to kill. What shall I do?
8081 This is not really an FAQ yet, but here's the answer anyway.
8083 * Run pkg_chk -N (from the pkgtools/pkg_chk package). It will tell you
8084 about newer versions of installed packages that are available, but
8085 not yet updated in pkgsrc.
8087 * Browse pkgsrc/doc/TODO ? it contains a list of suggested new packages
8088 and a list of cleanups and enhancements for pkgsrc that would be nice
8091 * Review packages for which review was requested on the pkgsrc-wip
8092 review mailing list.
8094 Chapter 23. GNOME packaging and porting
8099 23.2. Packaging a GNOME application
8100 23.3. Updating GNOME to a newer version
8101 23.4. Patching guidelines
8103 Quoting GNOME's web site:
8105 The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an
8106 intuitive and attractive desktop for users, and the GNOME development
8107 platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate
8108 into the rest of the desktop.
8110 pkgsrc provides a seamless way to automatically build and install a complete
8111 GNOME environment under many different platforms. We can say with confidence
8112 that pkgsrc is one of the most advanced build and packaging systems for GNOME
8113 due to its included technologies buildlink3, the wrappers and tools framework
8114 and automatic configuration file management. Lots of efforts are put into
8115 achieving a completely clean deinstallation of installed software components.
8117 Given that pkgsrc is NetBSD's official packaging system, the above also means
8118 that great efforts are put into making GNOME work under this operating system.
8119 Recently, DragonFly BSD also adopted pkgsrc as its preferred packaging system,
8120 contributing lots of portability fixes to make GNOME build and install under
8123 This chapter is aimed at pkgsrc developers and other people interested in
8124 helping our GNOME porting and packaging efforts. It provides instructions on
8125 how to manage the existing packages and some important information regarding
8130 Should you have some spare cycles to devote to NetBSD, pkgsrc and GNOME and are
8131 willing to learn new exciting stuff, please jump straight to the pending work
8132 list! There is still a long way to go to get a fully-functional GNOME desktop
8133 under NetBSD and we need your help to achieve it!
8137 pkgsrc includes three GNOME-related meta packages:
8139 * meta-pkgs/gnome-base: Provides the core GNOME desktop environment. It only
8140 includes the necessary bits to get it to boot correctly, although it may
8141 lack important functionality for daily operation. The idea behind this
8142 package is to let end users build their own configurations on top of this
8143 one, first installing this meta package to achieve a functional setup and
8144 then adding individual applications.
8146 * meta-pkgs/gnome: Provides a complete installation of the GNOME platform and
8147 desktop as defined by the GNOME project; this is based on the components
8148 distributed in the platform/x.y/x.y.z/sources and desktop/x.y/x.y.z/sources
8149 directories of the official FTP server. Developer-only tools found in those
8150 directories are not installed unless required by some other component to
8151 work properly. Similarly, packages from the bindings set (bindings/x.y/
8152 x.y.z/sources) are not pulled in unless required as a dependency for an
8153 end-user component. This package "extends" meta-pkgs/gnome-base.
8155 * meta-pkgs/gnome-devel: Installs all the tools required to build a GNOME
8156 component when fetched from the CVS repository. These are required to let
8157 the autogen.sh scripts work appropriately.
8159 In all these packages, the DEPENDS lines are sorted in a way that eases
8160 updates: a package may depend on other packages listed before it but not on any
8161 listed after it. It is very important to keep this order to ease updates so...
8162 do not change it to alphabetical sorting!
8164 23.2. Packaging a GNOME application
8166 Almost all GNOME applications are written in C and use a common set of tools as
8167 their build system. Things get different with the new bindings to other
8168 languages (such as Python), but the following will give you a general idea on
8169 the minimum required tools:
8171 * Almost all GNOME applications use the GNU Autotools as their build system.
8172 As a general rule you will need to tell this to your package:
8178 * If the package uses pkg-config to detect dependencies, add this tool to the
8179 list of required utilities:
8181 USE_TOOLS+=pkg-config
8183 Also use pkgtools/verifypc at the end of the build process to ensure that
8184 you did not miss to specify any dependency in your package and that the
8185 version requirements are all correct.
8187 * If the package uses intltool, be sure to add intltool to the USE_TOOLS to
8188 handle dependencies and to force the package to use the latest available
8191 * If the package uses gtk-doc (a documentation generation utility), do not
8192 add a dependency on it. The tool is rather big and the distfile should come
8193 with pregenerated documentation anyway; if it does not, it is a bug that
8194 you ought to report. For such packages you should disable gtk-doc (unless
8197 CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--disable-gtk-doc
8199 The default location of installed HTML files (share/gtk-doc/<package-name>)
8200 is correct and should not be changed unless the package insists on
8201 installing them somewhere else. Otherwise programs as devhelp will not be
8202 able to open them. You can do that with an entry similar to:
8204 CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--with-html-dir=${PREFIX}/share/gtk-doc/...
8206 GNOME uses multiple shared directories and files under the installation prefix
8207 to maintain databases. In this context, shared means that those exact same
8208 directories and files are used among several different packages, leading to
8209 conflicts in the PLIST. pkgsrc currently includes functionality to handle the
8210 most common cases, so you have to forget about using @unexec ${RMDIR} lines in
8211 your file lists and omitting shared files from them. If you find yourself doing
8212 those, your package is most likely incorrect.
8214 The following table lists the common situations that result in using shared
8215 directories or files. For each of them, the appropriate solution is given.
8216 After applying the solution be sure to regenerate the package's file list with
8217 make print-PLIST and ensure it is correct.
8219 Table 23.1. PLIST handling for GNOME packages
8221 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
8222 | If the package... | Then... |
8223 |-------------------------------------------+---------------------------------|
8224 | |See Section 19.6.10, "Packages |
8225 |Installs OMF files under share/omf. |installing scrollkeeper/rarian |
8227 |-------------------------------------------+---------------------------------|
8228 |Installs icons under the share/icons/ |See Section 19.6.19, "Packages |
8229 |hicolor hierarchy or updates share/icons/ |installing hicolor theme icons". |
8230 |hicolor/icon-theme.cache. | |
8231 |-------------------------------------------+---------------------------------|
8232 | |See Section 19.6.14, "Packages |
8233 |Installs files under share/mime/packages. |installing extensions to the MIME|
8235 |-------------------------------------------+---------------------------------|
8236 |Installs .desktop files under share/ |See Section 19.6.20, "Packages |
8237 |applications and these include MIME |installing desktop files". |
8239 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
8242 23.3. Updating GNOME to a newer version
8244 When seeing GNOME as a whole, there are two kinds of updates:
8248 Given that there is still a very long way for GNOME 3 (if it ever appears),
8249 we consider a major update one that goes from a 2.X version to a 2.Y one,
8250 where Y is even and greater than X. These are hard to achieve because they
8251 introduce lots of changes in the components' code and almost all GNOME
8252 distfiles are updated to newer versions. Some of them can even break API
8253 and ABI compatibility with the previous major version series. As a result,
8254 the update needs to be done all at once to minimize breakage.
8256 A major update typically consists of around 80 package updates and the
8257 addition of some new ones.
8261 We consider a minor update one that goes from a 2.A.X version to a 2.A.Y
8262 one where Y is greater than X. These are easy to achieve because they do
8263 not update all GNOME components, can be done in an incremental way and do
8264 not break API nor ABI compatibility.
8266 A minor update typically consists of around 50 package updates, although
8267 the numbers here may vary a lot.
8269 In order to update the GNOME components in pkgsrc to a new stable release
8270 (either major or minor), the following steps should be followed:
8272 1. Get a list of all the tarballs that form the new release by using the
8273 following commands. These will leave the full list of the components'
8274 distfiles into the list.txt file:
8276 % echo ls "*.tar.bz2" | \
8277 ftp -V ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/platform/x.y/x.y.z/sources/ | \
8278 awk '{ print $9 }' >list.txt
8279 % echo ls "*.tar.bz2" | \
8280 ftp -V ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/desktop/x.y/x.y.z/sources/ | \
8281 awk '{ print $9 }' >>list.txt
8283 2. Open each meta package's Makefile and bump their version to the release you
8284 are updating them to. The three meta packages should be always consistent
8285 with versioning. Obviously remove any PKGREVISIONs that might be in them.
8287 3. For each meta package, update all its DEPENDS lines to match the latest
8288 versions as shown by the above commands. Do not list any newer version
8289 (even if found in the FTP) because the meta packages are supposed to list
8290 the exact versions that form a specific GNOME release. Exceptions are
8291 permitted here if a newer version solves a serious issue in the overall
8292 desktop experience; these typically come in the form of a revision bump in
8293 pkgsrc, not in newer versions from the developers.
8295 Packages not listed in the list.txt file should be updated to the latest
8296 version available (if found in pkgsrc). This is the case, for example, of
8297 the dependencies on the GNU Autotools in the meta-pkgs/gnome-devel meta
8300 4. Generate a patch from the modified meta packages and extract the list of
8301 "new" lines. This will provide you an outline on what packages need to be
8302 updated in pkgsrc and in what order:
8304 % cvs diff -u gnome-devel gnome-base gnome | grep '^+D' >todo.txt
8306 5. For major desktop updates it is recommended to zap all your installed
8307 packages and start over from scratch at this point.
8309 6. Now comes the longest step by far: iterate over the contents of todo.txt
8310 and update the packages listed in it in order. For major desktop updates
8311 none of these should be committed until the entire set is completed because
8312 there are chances of breaking not-yet-updated packages.
8314 7. Once the packages are up to date and working, commit them to the tree one
8315 by one with appropriate log messages. At the end, commit the three meta
8316 package updates and all the corresponding changes to the doc/CHANGES-<YEAR>
8317 and pkgsrc/doc/TODO files.
8319 23.4. Patching guidelines
8321 GNOME is a very big component in pkgsrc which approaches 100 packages. Please,
8322 it is very important that you always, always, always feed back any portability
8323 fixes you do to a GNOME package to the mainstream developers (see
8324 Section 11.3.5, "Feedback to the author"). This is the only way to get their
8325 attention on portability issues and to ensure that future versions can be built
8326 out-of-the box on NetBSD. The less custom patches in pkgsrc, the easier further
8327 updates are. Those developers in charge of issuing major GNOME updates will be
8328 grateful if you do that.
8330 The most common places to report bugs are the GNOME's Bugzilla and the
8331 freedesktop.org's Bugzilla. Not all components use these to track bugs, but
8332 most of them do. Do not be short on your reports: always provide detailed
8333 explanations of the current failure, how it can be improved to achieve maximum
8334 portability and, if at all possible, provide a patch against CVS head. The more
8335 verbose you are, the higher chances of your patch being accepted.
8337 Also, please avoid using preprocessor magic to fix portability issues. While
8338 the FreeBSD GNOME people are doing a great job in porting GNOME to their
8339 operating system, the official GNOME sources are now plagued by conditionals
8340 that check for __FreeBSD__ and similar macros. This hurts portability. Please
8341 see our patching guidelines (Section 11.3.4, "Patching guidelines") for more
8344 Part III. The pkgsrc infrastructure internals
8346 This part of the guide deals with everything from the infrastructure that is
8347 behind the interfaces described in the developer's guide. A casual package
8348 maintainer should not need anything from this part.
8352 24. Design of the pkgsrc infrastructure
8354 24.1. The meaning of variable definitions
8355 24.2. Avoiding problems before they arise
8356 24.3. Variable evaluation
8358 24.3.1. At load time
8361 24.4. How can variables be specified?
8362 24.5. Designing interfaces for Makefile fragments
8364 24.5.1. Procedures with parameters
8365 24.5.2. Actions taken on behalf of parameters
8367 24.6. The order in which files are loaded
8369 24.6.1. The order in bsd.prefs.mk
8370 24.6.2. The order in bsd.pkg.mk
8372 25. Regression tests
8374 25.1. The regression tests framework
8375 25.2. Running the regression tests
8376 25.3. Adding a new regression test
8378 25.3.1. Overridable functions
8379 25.3.2. Helper functions
8383 26.1. Porting pkgsrc to a new operating system
8384 26.2. Adding support for a new compiler
8386 Chapter 24. Design of the pkgsrc infrastructure
8390 24.1. The meaning of variable definitions
8391 24.2. Avoiding problems before they arise
8392 24.3. Variable evaluation
8394 24.3.1. At load time
8397 24.4. How can variables be specified?
8398 24.5. Designing interfaces for Makefile fragments
8400 24.5.1. Procedures with parameters
8401 24.5.2. Actions taken on behalf of parameters
8403 24.6. The order in which files are loaded
8405 24.6.1. The order in bsd.prefs.mk
8406 24.6.2. The order in bsd.pkg.mk
8408 The pkgsrc infrastructure consists of many small Makefile fragments. Each such
8409 fragment needs a properly specified interface. This chapter explains how such
8410 an interface looks like.
8412 24.1. The meaning of variable definitions
8414 Whenever a variable is defined in the pkgsrc infrastructure, the location and
8415 the way of definition provide much information about the intended use of that
8416 variable. Additionally, more documentation may be found in a header comment or
8417 in this pkgsrc guide.
8419 A special file is mk/defaults/mk.conf, which lists all variables that are
8420 intended to be user-defined. They are either defined using the ?= operator or
8421 they are left undefined because defining them to anything would effectively
8422 mean "yes". All these variables may be overridden by the pkgsrc user in the
8425 Outside this file, the following conventions apply: Variables that are defined
8426 using the ?= operator may be overridden by a package.
8428 Variables that are defined using the = operator may be used read-only at
8431 Variables whose name starts with an underscore must not be accessed outside the
8432 pkgsrc infrastructure at all. They may change without further notice.
8436 These conventions are currently not applied consistently to the complete pkgsrc
8439 24.2. Avoiding problems before they arise
8441 All variables that contain lists of things should default to being empty. Two
8442 examples that do not follow this rule are USE_LANGUAGES and DISTFILES. These
8443 variables cannot simply be modified using the += operator in package Makefiles
8444 (or other files included by them), since there is no guarantee whether the
8445 variable is already set or not, and what its value is. In the case of
8446 DISTFILES, the packages "know" the default value and just define it as in the
8449 DISTFILES= ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX} additional-files.tar.gz
8451 Because of the selection of this default value, the same value appears in many
8452 package Makefiles. Similarly for USE_LANGUAGES, but in this case the default
8453 value ("c") is so short that it doesn't stand out. Nevertheless it is mentioned
8456 24.3. Variable evaluation
8458 24.3.1. At load time
8460 Variable evaluation takes place either at load time or at runtime, depending on
8461 the context in which they occur. The contexts where variables are evaluated at
8464 * The right hand side of the := and != operators,
8466 * Make directives like .if or .for,
8470 A special exception are references to the iteration variables of .for loops,
8471 which are expanded inline, no matter in which context they appear.
8473 As the values of variables may change during load time, care must be taken not
8474 to evaluate them by accident. Typical examples for variables that should not be
8475 evaluated at load time are DEPENDS and CONFIGURE_ARGS. To make the effect more
8476 clear, here is an example:
8478 CONFIGURE_ARGS= # none
8480 CONFIGURE_ARGS+= CFLAGS=${CFLAGS:Q}
8482 CONFIGURE_ARGS:= ${CONFIGURE_ARGS}
8487 This code shows how the use of the := operator can quickly lead to unexpected
8488 results. The first paragraph is fairly common code. The second paragraph
8489 evaluates the CONFIGURE_ARGS variable, which results in CFLAGS=-O. In the third
8490 paragraph, the -Wall is appended to the CFLAGS, but this addition will not
8491 appear in CONFIGURE_ARGS. In actual code, the three paragraphs from above
8492 typically occur in completely unrelated files.
8496 After all the files have been loaded, the values of the variables cannot be
8497 changed anymore. Variables that are used in the shell commands are expanded at
8500 24.4. How can variables be specified?
8502 There are many ways in which the definition and use of a variable can be
8503 restricted in order to detect bugs and violations of the (mostly unwritten)
8504 policies. See the pkglint developer's documentation for further details.
8506 24.5. Designing interfaces for Makefile fragments
8508 Most of the .mk files fall into one of the following classes. Cases where a
8509 file falls into more than one class should be avoided as it often leads to
8512 24.5.1. Procedures with parameters
8514 In a traditional imperative programming language some of the .mk files could be
8515 described as procedures. They take some input parameters and?after
8516 inclusion?provide a result in output parameters. Since all variables in
8517 Makefiles have global scope care must be taken not to use parameter names that
8518 have already another meaning. For example, PKGNAME is a bad choice for a
8521 Procedures are completely evaluated at preprocessing time. That is, when
8522 calling a procedure all input parameters must be completely resolvable. For
8523 example, CONFIGURE_ARGS should never be an input parameter since it is very
8524 likely that further text will be added after calling the procedure, which would
8525 effectively apply the procedure to only a part of the variable. Also,
8526 references to other variables wit will be modified after calling the procedure.
8528 A procedure can declare its output parameters either as suitable for use in
8529 preprocessing directives or as only available at runtime. The latter
8530 alternative is for variables that contain references to other runtime
8533 Procedures shall be written such that it is possible to call the procedure more
8534 than once. That is, the file must not contain multiple-inclusion guards.
8536 Examples for procedures are mk/bsd.options.mk and mk/buildlink3/bsd.builtin.mk.
8537 To express that the parameters are evaluated at load time, they should be
8538 assigned using the := operator, which should be used only for this purpose.
8540 24.5.2. Actions taken on behalf of parameters
8542 Action files take some input parameters and may define runtime variables. They
8543 shall not define loadtime variables. There are action files that are included
8544 implicitly by the pkgsrc infrastructure, while other must be included
8547 An example for action files is mk/subst.mk.
8549 24.6. The order in which files are loaded
8551 Package Makefiles usually consist of a set of variable definitions, and include
8552 the file ../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk in the very last line. Before that, they may also
8553 include various other *.mk files if they need to query the availability of
8554 certain features like the type of compiler or the X11 implementation. Due to
8555 the heavy use of preprocessor directives like .if and .for, the order in which
8556 the files are loaded matters.
8558 This section describes at which point the various files are loaded and gives
8559 reasons for that order.
8561 24.6.1. The order in bsd.prefs.mk
8563 The very first action in bsd.prefs.mk is to define some essential variables
8564 like OPSYS, OS_VERSION and MACHINE_ARCH.
8566 Then, the user settings are loaded from the file specified in MAKECONF, which
8567 is usually mk.conf. After that, those variables that have not been overridden
8568 by the user are loaded from mk/defaults/mk.conf.
8570 After the user settings, the system settings and platform settings are loaded,
8571 which may override the user settings.
8573 Then, the tool definitions are loaded. The tool wrappers are not yet in effect.
8574 This only happens when building a package, so the proper variables must be used
8575 instead of the direct tool names.
8577 As the last steps, some essential variables from the wrapper and the package
8578 system flavor are loaded, as well as the variables that have been cached in
8579 earlier phases of a package build.
8581 24.6.2. The order in bsd.pkg.mk
8583 First, bsd.prefs.mk is loaded.
8585 Then, the various *-vars.mk files are loaded, which fill default values for
8586 those variables that have not been defined by the package. These variables may
8587 later be used even in unrelated files.
8589 Then, the file bsd.pkg.error.mk provides the target error-check that is added
8590 as a special dependency to all other targets that use DELAYED_ERROR_MSG or
8591 DELAYED_WARNING_MSG.
8593 Then, the package-specific hacks from hacks.mk are included.
8595 Then, various other files follow. Most of them don't have any dependencies on
8596 what they need to have included before or after them, though some do.
8598 The code to check PKG_FAIL_REASON and PKG_SKIP_REASON is then executed, which
8599 restricts the use of these variables to all the files that have been included
8600 before. Appearances in later files will be silently ignored.
8602 Then, the files for the main targets are included, in the order of later
8603 execution, though the actual order should not matter.
8605 At last, some more files are included that don't set any interesting variables
8606 but rather just define make targets to be executed.
8608 Chapter 25. Regression tests
8612 25.1. The regression tests framework
8613 25.2. Running the regression tests
8614 25.3. Adding a new regression test
8616 25.3.1. Overridable functions
8617 25.3.2. Helper functions
8619 The pkgsrc infrastructure consists of a large codebase, and there are many
8620 corners where every little bit of a file is well thought out, making pkgsrc
8621 likely to fail as soon as anything is changed near those parts. To prevent most
8622 changes from breaking anything, a suite of regression tests should go along
8623 with every important part of the pkgsrc infrastructure. This chapter describes
8624 how regression tests work in pkgsrc and how you can add new tests.
8626 25.1. The regression tests framework
8628 25.2. Running the regression tests
8630 You first need to install the pkgtools/pkg_regress package, which provides the
8631 pkg_regress command. Then you can simply run that command, which will run all
8632 tests in the regress category.
8634 25.3. Adding a new regression test
8636 Every directory in the regress category that contains a file called spec is
8637 considered a regression test. This file is a shell program that is included by
8638 the pkg_regress command. The following functions can be overridden to suit your
8641 25.3.1. Overridable functions
8643 These functions do not take any parameters. They are all called in "set -e"
8644 mode, so you should be careful to check the exitcodes of any commands you run
8649 This function prepares the environment for the test. By default it does
8654 This function runs the actual test. By default, it calls TEST_MAKE with the
8655 arguments MAKEARGS_TEST and writes its output including error messages into
8656 the file TEST_OUTFILE.
8660 This function is run after the test and is typically used to compare the
8661 actual output from the one that is expected. It can make use of the various
8662 helper functions from the next section.
8666 This function cleans everything up after the test has been run. By default
8669 25.3.2. Helper functions
8671 exit_status(expected)
8673 This function compares the exitcode of the do_test() function with its
8674 first parameter. If they differ, the test will fail.
8676 output_require(regex...)
8678 This function checks for each of its parameters if the output from do_test
8679 () matches the extended regular expression. If it does not, the test will
8682 output_prohibit(regex...)
8684 This function checks for each of its parameters if the output from do_test
8685 () does not match the extended regular expression. If any of the regular
8686 expressions matches, the test will fail.
8688 Chapter 26. Porting pkgsrc
8692 26.1. Porting pkgsrc to a new operating system
8693 26.2. Adding support for a new compiler
8695 The pkgsrc system has already been ported to many operating systems, hardware
8696 architectures and compilers. This chapter explains the necessary steps to make
8697 pkgsrc even more portable.
8699 26.1. Porting pkgsrc to a new operating system
8701 To port pkgsrc to a new operating system (called MyOS in this example), you
8702 need to touch the following files:
8704 pkgtools/bootstrap-mk-files/files/mods/MyOS.sys.mk
8706 This file contains some basic definitions, for example the name of the C
8711 Insert code that defines the variables OPSYS, OS_VERSION, LOWER_OS_VERSION,
8712 LOWER_VENDOR, MACHINE_ARCH, OBJECT_FMT, APPEND_ELF, and the other variables
8713 that appear in this file.
8717 This file contains the platform-specific definitions that are used by
8718 pkgsrc. Start by copying one of the other files and edit it to your needs.
8720 mk/platform/MyOS.pkg.dist
8722 This file contains a list of directories, together with their permission
8723 bits and ownership. These directories will be created automatically with
8724 every package that explicitly sets USE_MTREE. This feature will be removed.
8726 mk/platform/MyOS.x11.dist
8728 Just copy one of the pre-existing x11.dist files to your MyOS.x11.dist.
8730 mk/tools/bootstrap.mk
8732 On some operating systems, the tools that are provided with the base system
8733 are not good enough for pkgsrc. For example, there are many versions of sed
8734 (1) that have a narrow limit on the line length they can process. Therefore
8735 pkgsrc brings its own tools, which can be enabled here.
8737 mk/tools/tools.MyOS.mk
8739 This file defines the paths to all the tools that are needed by one or the
8740 other package in pkgsrc, as well as by pkgsrc itself. Find out where these
8741 tools are on your platform and add them.
8743 Now, you should be able to build some basic packages, like lang/perl5, shells/
8746 26.2. Adding support for a new compiler
8750 Appendix A. A simple example package: bison
8759 A.1.4. Checking a package with pkglint
8761 A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging
8763 We checked to find a piece of software that wasn't in the packages collection,
8764 and picked GNU bison. Quite why someone would want to have bison when Berkeley
8765 yacc is already present in the tree is beyond us, but it's useful for the
8766 purposes of this exercise.
8775 DISTNAME= bison-1.25
8777 MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_GNU}
8779 MAINTAINER= thorpej@NetBSD.org
8780 HOMEPAGE= http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/bison.html
8781 COMMENT= GNU yacc clone
8784 INFO_FILES= bison.info
8786 .include "../../mk/bsd.pkg.mk"
8790 GNU version of yacc. Can make re-entrant parsers, and numerous other
8791 improvements. Why you would want this when Berkeley yacc(1) is part
8792 of the NetBSD source tree is beyond me.
8802 A.1.4. Checking a package with pkglint
8804 The NetBSD package system comes with pkgtools/pkglint which helps to check the
8805 contents of these files. After installation it is quite easy to use, just
8806 change to the directory of the package you wish to examine and execute pkglint:
8811 Depending on the supplied command line arguments (see pkglint(1)), more checks
8812 will be performed. Use e.g. pkglint -Call -Wall for a very thorough check.
8814 A.2. Steps for building, installing, packaging
8816 Create the directory where the package lives, plus any auxiliary directories:
8818 # cd /usr/pkgsrc/lang
8823 Create Makefile, DESCR and PLIST (see Chapter 11, Package components - files,
8824 directories and contents) then continue with fetching the distfile:
8827 >> bison-1.25.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist on this system.
8828 >> Attempting to fetch from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu//.
8829 Requesting ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
8830 ftp: Error retrieving file: 500 Internal error
8832 >> Attempting to fetch from ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/gnu//.
8833 Requesting ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/gnu//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
8834 ftp: Error retrieving file: 500 Internal error
8836 >> Attempting to fetch from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles//.
8837 Requesting ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles//bison-1.25.tar.gz (via ftp://orpheus.amdahl.com:80/)
8838 Successfully retrieved file.
8840 Generate the checksum of the distfile into distinfo:
8847 >> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
8848 ===> Extracting for bison-1.25
8849 ===> Patching for bison-1.25
8850 ===> Ignoring empty patch directory
8851 ===> Configuring for bison-1.25
8852 creating cache ./config.cache
8853 checking for gcc... cc
8854 checking whether we are using GNU C... yes
8855 checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin
8856 checking how to run the C preprocessor... cc -E
8857 checking for minix/config.h... no
8858 checking for POSIXized ISC... no
8859 checking whether cross-compiling... no
8860 checking for ANSI C header files... yes
8861 checking for string.h... yes
8862 checking for stdlib.h... yes
8863 checking for memory.h... yes
8864 checking for working const... yes
8865 checking for working alloca.h... no
8866 checking for alloca... yes
8867 checking for strerror... yes
8868 updating cache ./config.cache
8869 creating ./config.status
8871 ===> Building for bison-1.25
8872 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
8873 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
8874 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
8875 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
8876 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
8877 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
8878 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
8879 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
8880 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
8881 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
8882 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
8883 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
8884 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
8885 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
8886 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
8887 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
8888 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
8889 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
8890 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
8891 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
8892 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
8893 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
8894 ./files.c:240: warning: mktemp() possibly used unsafely, consider using mkstemp()
8896 sed -e "/^#line/ s|bison|/usr/pkg/share/bison|" < ./bison.simple > bison.s1
8898 Everything seems OK, so install the files:
8901 >> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
8902 ===> Installing for bison-1.25
8903 sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/pkg/bin /usr/pkg/share /usr/pkg/info /usr/pkg/man/man1
8904 rm -f /usr/pkg/bin/bison
8905 cd /usr/pkg/share; rm -f bison.simple bison.hairy
8906 rm -f /usr/pkg/man/man1/bison.1 /usr/pkg/info/bison.info*
8907 install -c -o bin -g bin -m 555 bison /usr/pkg/bin/bison
8908 /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 bison.s1 /usr/pkg/share/bison.simple
8909 /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 ./bison.hairy /usr/pkg/share/bison.hairy
8910 cd .; for f in bison.info*; do /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 $f /usr/pkg/info/$f; done
8911 /usr/bin/install -c -o bin -g bin -m 644 ./bison.1 /usr/pkg/man/man1/bison.1
8912 ===> Registering installation for bison-1.25
8914 You can now use bison, and also - if you decide so - remove it with pkg_delete
8915 bison. Should you decide that you want a binary package, do this now:
8918 >> Checksum OK for bison-1.25.tar.gz.
8919 ===> Building package for bison-1.25
8920 Creating package bison-1.25.tgz
8921 Registering depends:.
8922 Creating gzip'd tar ball in '/u/pkgsrc/lang/bison/bison-1.25.tgz'
8924 Now that you don't need the source and object files any more, clean up:
8927 ===> Cleaning for bison-1.25
8929 Appendix B. Build logs
8933 B.1. Building figlet
8934 B.2. Packaging figlet
8936 B.1. Building figlet
8939 ===> Checking for vulnerabilities in figlet-2.2.1nb2
8940 => figlet221.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist on this system.
8941 => Attempting to fetch figlet221.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/program/unix/.
8943 Connected to ftp.plig.net.
8944 220 ftp.plig.org NcFTPd Server (licensed copy) ready.
8945 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
8946 230-You are user #5 of 500 simultaneous users allowed.
8949 230- | _| |_ ___ ___| |_|___ ___ ___ ___
8950 230- | _| _| . |_| . | | | . |_| . | _| . |
8951 230- |_| |_| | _|_| _|_|_|_ |_|___|_| |_ |
8952 230- |_| |_| |___| |___|
8954 230-** Welcome to ftp.plig.org **
8956 230-Please note that all transfers from this FTP site are logged. If you
8957 230-do not like this, please disconnect now.
8959 230-This archive is available via
8961 230-HTTP: http://ftp.plig.org/
8962 230-FTP: ftp://ftp.plig.org/ (max 500 connections)
8963 230-RSYNC: rsync://ftp.plig.org/ (max 30 connections)
8965 230-Please email comments, bug reports and requests for packages to be
8966 230-mirrored to ftp-admin@plig.org.
8969 230 Logged in anonymously.
8970 Remote system type is UNIX.
8971 Using binary mode to transfer files.
8973 250 "/pub" is new cwd.
8974 250-"/pub/figlet" is new cwd.
8976 250-Welcome to the figlet archive at ftp.figlet.org
8978 250- ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/
8980 250-The official FIGlet web page is:
8981 250- http://www.figlet.org/
8983 250-If you have questions, please mailto:info@figlet.org. If you want to
8984 250-contribute a font or something else, you can email us.
8986 250 "/pub/figlet/program" is new cwd.
8987 250 "/pub/figlet/program/unix" is new cwd.
8988 local: figlet221.tar.gz remote: figlet221.tar.gz
8989 502 Unimplemented command.
8990 227 Entering Passive Mode (195,40,6,41,246,104)
8991 150 Data connection accepted from 84.128.86.72:65131; transfer starting for figlet221.tar.gz (172219 bytes).
8992 38% |************** | 65800 64.16 KB/s 00:01 ETA
8993 226 Transfer completed.
8994 172219 bytes received in 00:02 (75.99 KB/s)
8996 => Checksum OK for figlet221.tar.gz.
8997 ===> Extracting for figlet-2.2.1nb2
8998 ===> Required installed package ccache-[0-9]*: ccache-2.3nb1 found
8999 ===> Patching for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9000 ===> Applying pkgsrc patches for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9001 ===> Overriding tools for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9002 ===> Creating toolchain wrappers for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9003 ===> Configuring for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9004 ===> Building for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9005 gcc -O2 -DDEFAULTFONTDIR=\"/usr/pkg/share/figlet\" -DDEFAULTFONTFILE=\"standard.flf\" figlet.c zipio.c crc.c inflate.c -o figlet
9007 gcc -O2 -o chkfont chkfont.c
9008 => Unwrapping files-to-be-installed.
9011 ===> Checking for vulnerabilities in figlet-2.2.1nb2
9012 ===> Installing for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9013 install -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 /usr/pkg/bin
9014 install -d -o root -g wheel -m 755 /usr/pkg/man/man6
9015 mkdir -p /usr/pkg/share/figlet
9016 cp figlet /usr/pkg/bin
9017 cp chkfont /usr/pkg/bin
9018 chmod 555 figlist showfigfonts
9019 cp figlist /usr/pkg/bin
9020 cp showfigfonts /usr/pkg/bin
9021 cp fonts/*.flf /usr/pkg/share/figlet
9022 cp fonts/*.flc /usr/pkg/share/figlet
9023 cp figlet.6 /usr/pkg/man/man6
9024 ===> Registering installation for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9027 B.2. Packaging figlet
9030 ===> Checking for vulnerabilities in figlet-2.2.1nb2
9031 ===> Packaging figlet-2.2.1nb2
9032 ===> Building binary package for figlet-2.2.1nb2
9033 Creating package /home/cvs/pkgsrc/packages/i386/All/figlet-2.2.1nb2.tgz
9034 Using SrcDir value of /usr/pkg
9035 Registering depends:.
9038 Appendix C. Directory layout of the pkgsrc FTP server
9042 C.1. distfiles: The distributed source files
9043 C.2. misc: Miscellaneous things
9044 C.3. packages: Binary packages
9045 C.4. reports: Bulk build reports
9046 C.5. current, pkgsrc-20xxQy: source packages
9048 As in other big projects, the directory layout of pkgsrc is quite complex for
9049 newbies. This chapter explains where you find things on the FTP server. The
9050 base directory on ftp.NetBSD.org is /pub/pkgsrc/. On other servers it may be
9051 different, but inside this directory, everything should look the same, no
9052 matter on which server you are. This directory contains some subdirectories,
9053 which are explained below.
9055 C.1. distfiles: The distributed source files
9057 The directory distfiles contains lots of archive files from all pkgsrc
9058 packages, which are mirrored here. The subdirectories are called after their
9059 package names and are used when the distributed files have names that don't
9060 explicitly contain a version number or are otherwise too generic (for example
9063 C.2. misc: Miscellaneous things
9065 This directory contains things that individual pkgsrc developers find worth
9068 C.3. packages: Binary packages
9070 This directory contains binary packages for the various platforms that are
9071 supported by pkgsrc. Each subdirectory is of the form OPSYS/ARCH/OSVERSION_TAG.
9072 The meaning of these variables is:
9074 * OPSYS is the name of the operating system for which the packages have been
9075 built. The name is taken from the output of the uname command, so it may
9076 differ from the one you are used to hear.
9078 * ARCH is the hardware architecture of the platform for which the packages
9079 have been built. It also includes the ABI (Application Binary Interface)
9080 for platforms that have several of them.
9082 * OSVERSION is the version of the operating system. For version numbers that
9083 change often (for example NetBSD-current), the often-changing part should
9084 be replaced with an x, for example 4.99.x.
9086 * TAG is either 20xxQy for a stable branch, or head for packages built from
9087 the HEAD branch. The latter should only be used when the packages are
9088 updated on a regular basis. Otherwise the date from checking out pkgsrc
9089 should be appended, for example head_20071015.
9091 The rationale for exactly this scheme is that the pkgsrc users looking for
9092 binary packages can quickly click through the directories on the server and
9093 find the best binary packages for their machines. Since they usually know the
9094 operating system and the hardware architecture, OPSYS and ARCH are placed
9095 first. After these choices, they can select the best combination of OSVERSION
9096 and TAG together, since it is usually the case that packages stay compatible
9097 between different version of the operating system.
9099 In each of these directories, there is a whole binary packages collection for a
9100 specific platform. It has a directory called All which contains all binary
9101 packages. Besides that, there are various category directories that contain
9102 symbolic links to the real binary packages.
9104 C.4. reports: Bulk build reports
9106 Here are the reports from bulk builds, for those who want to fix packages that
9107 didn't build on some of the platforms. The structure of subdirectories should
9108 look like the one in Section C.3, "packages: Binary packages".
9110 C.5. current, pkgsrc-20xxQy: source packages
9112 These directories contain the "real" pkgsrc, that is the files that define how
9113 to create binary packages from source archives.
9115 The directory pkgsrc contains a snapshot of the CVS repository, which is
9116 updated regularly. The file pkgsrc.tar.gz contains the same as the directory,
9117 ready to be downloaded as a whole.
9119 In the directories for the quarterly branches, there is an additional file
9120 called pkgsrc-20xxQy.tar.gz, which contains the state of pkgsrc when it was
9123 Appendix D. Editing guidelines for the pkgsrc guide
9130 This section contains information on editing the pkgsrc guide itself.
9134 The pkgsrc guide's source code is stored in pkgsrc/doc/guide/files, and several
9135 files are created from it:
9137 * pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.txt
9139 * pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.html
9141 * http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/pkgsrc/
9143 * http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/pkgsrc/pkgsrc.pdf: The PDF version of the pkgsrc
9146 * http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/pkgsrc/pkgsrc.ps: PostScript version of the
9151 The procedure to edit the pkgsrc guide is:
9153 1. Make sure you have the packages needed to regenerate the pkgsrc guide (and
9154 other XML-based NetBSD documentation) installed. These are meta-pkgs/
9155 netbsd-doc for creating the ASCII and HTML versions, and meta-pkgs/
9156 netbsd-doc-print for the PostScript and PDF versions. You will need both
9157 packages installed, to make sure documentation is consistent across all
9160 2. Run cd doc/guide to get to the right directory. All further steps will take
9163 3. Edit the XML file(s) in files/.
9165 4. Run bmake to check the pkgsrc guide for valid XML and to build the final
9166 output files. If you get any errors at this stage, you can just edit the
9167 files, as there are only symbolic links in the working directory, pointing
9168 to the files in files/.
9170 5. (cd files && cvs commit)
9172 6. Run bmake clean && bmake to regenerate the output files with the proper RCS
9175 7. Run bmake regen to install and commit the files in both pkgsrc/doc and
9180 If you have added, removed or renamed some chapters, you need to
9181 synchronize them using cvs add or cvs delete in the htdocs directory.