[aur-general] introduction and questions

[Andrei Thorp]

Excerpts from hollunder's message of Tue Jul 07 11:22:31 -0400 2009:
> On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:41:49 -0400
> Andrei Thorp <garoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Excerpts from Magnus Therning's message of Tue Jul 07 01:31:42 -0400
> > 2009:
> > > edogawaconan wrote:
> > > [..]
> > > > use install instead of mkdir/cp
> > > 
> > > Even better, to help non-Arch users, use auto-tools (or some other 
> > > build/install/distribution tool with Vala support) for building and
> > > installing.
> > > 
> > > automake[1]
> > > waf[2]
> > 
> > To explain this a bit more, generally, it's not the software
> > packager's job to make stuff install per se. Most software that you
> > get comes with commands like "make" and "make install" -- these are
> > used for compiling the software and having it install, respectively.
> > 
> > The way you do this is by creating build scripts of some sort for your
> > package. The most common way is to use autotools, as mentioned before.
> > This is the standard "make" system made by GNU, and it's pretty much
> > oriented around shell scripts.
> > 
> > Then, the packager uses the fairly standard variable to make, DESTDIR,
> > to tell the package to install into a folder rather than to / by
> > default. This folder is then packaged up by makepkg and can be
> > extracted over / to "install" the software to the correct place.
> > 
> > Personally, I find that the old autotools are kind of... old. They
> > work fine and are easy to do for small projects that don't need to do
> > much work during build/install (like yours), but newer systems like
> > SCons and CMake are being used more and more frequently in larger
> > systems like KDE.
> > 
> > I think you get the idea generally, but here is a very simple example
> > Makefile (the script used by make) to give you an idea. Note that make
> > requires the use of tabs instead of spaces in indentation:
> > 
> > DESTDIR=
> > 
> > all:
> >     @ echo -ne "\e[32;1m==>\e[0m Building."
> >     valac foobar.vala
> > 
> > install:
> >     @ echo -e "\e[32;1m==>\e[0m Installing files."
> >     install -d ${DESTDIR}/usr/bin
> >     install -m0555 foobar ${DESTDIR}/usr/bin
> > 
> > uninstall:
> >     @ echo -e "\e[32;1m==>\e[0m Uninstall files."
> >     rm ${DESTDIR}/usr/bin/foobar || true
> > 
> > clean:
> > 
> > ====================================================
> > 
> > Some notes on this:
> >  - the sections are the categories for make (ie. make uninstall)
> >  - @ in front of the line tells make to not print this line. Usually,
> >    make outputs what command it's running as it runs it.
> >  - The funky characters in the echos are cli colour codes for
> >    prettiness.
> >  - the first section is the default -- so just "make" instead of "make
> >    all" is fine.
> >  - The clean instruction isn't used in this example, but it's
> > generally used to clean up executables and stuff. Debian requires this
> >    instruction by default...
> > 
> > Good luck!
> 
> Wow, thanks for this simple example.
> So far I've only patched DESTDIR into Makefiles, good to know a
> little bit more about this stuff.

Happy to help.
-- 
Andrei Thorp, Developer: Xandros Corp. (http://www.xandros.com)