[arch-general] Post-packaging modification tool

[Magnus Therning]

On 28 April 2015 at 23:04, Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 03:19:25PM -0500, Eli Schwartz wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Sebastiaan Lokhorst <
>> sebastiaanlokhorst at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > 2015-04-28 18:50 GMT+02:00 Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org>:
>> >
>> > > I have a large set of already packages (300+) that I'd like to make
>> > > some minor modifications to the meta data in.  Since it takes a few
>> > > hours to build them all I'd prefer to avoid dong that.  So, is there
>> > > a tool out there that allows me to make some minor changes to the meta
>> > > data of a package?
>> > >
>> >
>> > A package is just a tar.xz, so you can simply unzip it, edit the .PKGINFO
>> > file, and zip it again. (I think)
>> >
>>
>> Alternatively, if the PKGBUILD is updated makepkg has an option to
>> --repackage without redoing build()
>>
>> Editing .PKGINFO might be faster, but repackaging is the "correct" way to
>> do it, for however much that's worth.
>
> That might be the easiest way, unless someone's already written a tool
> that solves the problem.

Unfortunately `pacman -R` won't work.  It will re-run the `package()`
function in the PKGBUILD, meaning that it relies on the packaged SW's
build system (Makefile, or similar) to first install the built stuff
in `$pkgdir`.  Since I only have the packages I can't easily recreate
a complete `$srcdir` without first compiling... so I suppose I'll have
to look into the details of the package format and come up with some
script to modify it directly.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                      OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4
email: magnus at therning.org   jabber: magnus at therning.org
twitter: magthe               http://therning.org/magnus