makepkg(8)

NAME
makepkg - package build utility

SYNOPSIS
makepkg

DESCRIPTION
makepkg will build packages for you. All it needs is a build-capable linux platform, wget, and some build scripts. The advantage to a script-based build is that you only really do the work once. Once you have the build script for a package, you just need to run makepkg and it will do the rest: download source files, check dependencies, configure the buildtime settings, build the package, install the package into a temporary root, make customizations, generate meta-info, and package the whole thing up for pacman to use. makeworld can be used to rebuild an entire package group, or the entire build tree.

BUILD PROCESS (or How To Build Your Own Packages)
Start in an isolated directory (ie, it's not used for anything other than building this package). The build script should be called PKGBUILD and it should bear resemblance to the example below. NOTE: If you have a local copy of the Arch Build System (ABS) tree on your computer, you can copy the PKGBUILD.proto file to your new package build directory and edit it from there. To acquire/sync the ABS tree, use the abs script included with pacman/makepkg.

PKGBUILD Example:
    pkgname=modutils
        pkgver=2.4.13
        pkgrel=1
        pkgdesc="Utilities for inserting and removing modules from the linux kernel"
        backup=(etc/modules.conf)
        depends=('glibc>=2.2.5' 'bash' 'zlib')
        source=(ftp://ftp.server.com/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz modules.conf)
        build() {
          cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
          ./configure --prefix=/usr
          make || return 1
          make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
          # copy our custom modules.conf into the package root
          mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/etc
          cp ../modules.conf $startdir/pkg/etc
        }
As you can see, the setup is fairly simple. The first three lines define the package name and version info. They also define the final package name which will be of the form $pkgname-$pkgver-$pkgrel.pkg.tar.gz. The fourth line provides a brief description of the package. These four lines should be present in every PKGBUILD script. The line with backup= specifies files that should be treated specially when removing or upgrading packages. See HANDLING CONFIG FILES in the pacman manpage for more information on this. The sixth line lists the dependencies for this package. In order to build/run the package, all dependencies must be satisifed first. makepkg will check this before attempting to build the package. Once your PKGBUILD is created, you can run makepkg from the build directory. makepkg will then check dependencies and look for the source files required to build. If some are missing it will attempt to download them, provided there is a fully-qualified URL in the source array. The sources are then extracted into a directory called ./src and the build function is called. This is where all package configuration, building, and installing should be done. Any customization will likely take place here. After a package is built, the build function must install the package files into a special package root, which can be referenced by $startdir/pkg in the build function. The typical way to do this is one of the following:
    make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install
    or
    make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
Notice that the "/usr" portion should be present with "prefix", but not "DESTDIR". Once the package is successfully installed into the package root, makepkg will remove some directories (as per Arch Linux package guidelines; if you use this elsewhere, feel free to change it) like /usr/doc and /usr/info. It will then strip debugging info from libraries and binaries and generate a meta-info file. Finally, it will compress everything into a .pkg.tar.gz file and leave it in the directory you ran makepkg from. At this point you should have a package file in the current directory, named something like name-version-release.pkg.tar.gz. Done!

Install/Upgrade/Remove Scripting
Pacman has the ability to store and execute a package-specific script when it installs, removes, or upgrades a package. This allows a package to "configure itself" after installation and do the opposite right before it is removed. The exact time the script is run varies with each operation:

post_install
    script is run right after files are installed.

post_upgrade
    script is run after all files have been upgraded.

pre_remove
    script is run right before files are removed.
To use this feature, just create a file (eg, pkgname.install) and put it in the same directory as the PKGBUILD script. Then use the install directive:
    install=pkgname.install
The install script does not need to be specified in the source array.

Install scripts must follow this format:
    # arg 1:  the new package version
        post_install() {
          #
          #  do post-install stuff here
          #
          /bin/true
        }
        # arg 1:  the new package version
        # arg 2:  the old package version
        post_upgrade() {
          #
          #  do post-upgrade stuff here
          #
          /bin/true
        }
        # arg 1:  the old package version
        pre_remove() {
          #
          #  do pre-remove stuff here
          #
          /bin/true
        }
        op=$1
        shift
        $op $*
This template is also available in your ABS tree (/usr/abs/install.proto).

PKGBUILD Directives

pkgname
    The name of the package. This has be a unix-friendly name as it will be used in the package filename.

pkgver
    This is the version of the software as released from the author (eg, 2.7.1).

pkgrel
    This is the release number specific to Arch Linux packages.

pkgdesc
    This should be a brief description of the package and its functionality.

backup
    A space-delimited array of filenames (without a preceding slash). The backup line will be propagated to the package meta-info file for pacman. This will designate all files listed there to be backed up if this package is ever removed from a system. See HANDLING CONFIG FILES in the pacman manpage for more information.

install
    Specified a special install script that is to be included in the package. This file should reside in the same directory as the PKGBUILD, and will be copied into the package by makepkg. It does not need to be included in the source array. (eg, install=modutils.install)

depends
    An array of packages that this package depends on to build and run. Packages in this list should be surrounded with single quotes and contain at least the package name. They can also include a version requirement of the form name<>version, where <> is one of these three comparisons: >= (greater than equal to), <= (less than or equal to), or = (equal to). See the PKGBUILD example above for an example of the depends directive.

conflicts
    An array of packages that will conflict with this package (ie, they cannot both be installed at the same time). This directive follows the same format as depends except you cannot specify versions here, only package names.

source
    The source line is an array of source files required to build the package. Source files must reside in the same directory as the PKGBUILD file, unless they have a fully-qualified URL. Then if the source file does not already exist in /var/cache/pacman/src, the file is downloaded by wget.

MAKEPKG OPTIONS

-c, --clean
    Clean up leftover work files/directories after a successful build.

-i, --install
    Install/Upgrade the package after a successful build.

CONFIGURATION
Configuration options are stored in /etc/makepkg.conf. This file is parsed as a bash script, so you can export any special compiler flags you wish to use. This is helpful for building for different architectures, or with different optimizations. NOTE: This does not guarantee that all package Makefiles will use your exported variables. Some of them are flaky...

SEE ALSO
pacman is the package manager that uses packages built by makepkg. See the Arch Linux Documentation for package-building guidelines if you wish to contribute packages to the Arch Linux project.

AUTHOR
Judd Vinet <jvinet@zeroflux.org>