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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>A guide to robotpkg</title>
</head>
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</style>
<body><div id="content">
<div id="preamble">
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<h1 align="center">A guide to robotpkg </h1>
<h3 align="center">Anthony Mallet - <tt>anthony.mallet@laas.fr</tt> </h3>
<h3 align="center">October 9, 2017</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</div><div id="frontmatter">
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div class="small">Copyright © 2006-2011,2013 LAAS/CNRS.<br />
Copyright © 1997-2010 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.<br />
All rights reserved.<br />
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ol type="1">
<li> Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ol>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE NETBSD FOUNDATION, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE FOUNDATION OR CONTRIBUTORS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
</div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<h1>Contents </h1><a href="#tth_chAp1"
>1 Introduction</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.1"
>1.1 What is robotpkg?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.2"
>1.2 Why robotpkg?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.3"
>1.3 Supported platforms</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.4"
>1.4 Overview</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.5"
>1.5 Terminology</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.6"
>1.6 Roles involved in robotpkg</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.7"
>1.7 Typography</a><br />
<a href="#tth_chAp2"
>2 The robotpkg user's guide</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.1"
>2.1 Where to get robotpkg and how to keep it up-to-date</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.1.1"
>2.1.1 Getting the binary bootstrap kit</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.1.2"
>2.1.2 Getting robotpkg for source compilation</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.1.3"
>2.1.3 Keeping robotpkg up-to-date</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.2"
>2.2 Bootstrapping robotpkg</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.2.1"
>2.2.1 Bootstrapping via the binary kit</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.2.2"
>2.2.2 Bootstrapping from source</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3"
>2.3 Using robotpkg</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.1"
>2.3.1 Building packages from source</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.2"
>2.3.2 Building packages from a repository checkout</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.3"
>2.3.3 Installing binary packages</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.4"
>2.3.4 Removing packages</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.5"
>2.3.5 Getting information about installed packages</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.6"
>2.3.6 Other administrative functions</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3.7"
>2.3.7 Available <tt>make</tt> targets</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4"
>2.4 Configuring robotpkg</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.1"
>2.4.1 Selecting build options</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.2"
>2.4.2 Selecting build alternatives</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.3"
>2.4.3 Defining collections of packages</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.4"
>2.4.4 Package specific configuration variables</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.5"
>2.4.5 General configuration variables</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.6"
>2.4.6 Variables affecting the build process</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.4.7"
>2.4.7 Additional flags to the compiler</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.5"
>2.5 Creating binary packages for everything</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.5.1"
>2.5.1 Initial setup</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.5.2"
>2.5.2 Running bulk builds</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.5.3"
>2.5.3 Generating pretty reports</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.5.4"
>2.5.4 Automated bulk builds</a><br />
<a href="#tth_chAp3"
>3 The robotpkg developer's guide</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1"
>3.1 Package files, directories and contents</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1.1"
>3.1.1 Makefile</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1.2"
>3.1.2 distinfo</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1.3"
>3.1.3 PLIST</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1.4"
>3.1.4 patches/*</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2"
>3.2 General operation</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2.1"
>3.2.1 Adding build options to a package</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2.2"
>3.2.2 Customizing the PLIST</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2.3"
>3.2.3 Customizing the semi-automatic PLIST generation</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2.4"
>3.2.4 Incrementing versions when fixing an existing package</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2.5"
>3.2.5 Substituting variable text in the package files</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.3"
>3.3 The build phase</a><br />
</div><div id="mainmatter">
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_chAp1"></a><h1>
1 <br />Introduction</h1>
<a id="chapter:introduction">
</a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.1"></a><h2>
1.1 What is robotpkg?</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The robotics research community has always been developing a lot of software,
in order to illustrate theoretical concepts and validate algorithms on board
real robots. A great amount of this software was made freely available to the
community, especially for Unix-based systems, and is usually available in form
of the source code. Therefore, before such software can be used, it needs to be
configured to the local system, compiled and installed. This is exactly what
The Robotics Packages Collection (robotpkg) does. robotpkg also has some basic
commands to handle binary packages, so that not every user has to build the
packages for himself, which is a time-costly, cumbersome and error-prone task.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The robotpkg project was initiated in the <a href="http://www.laas.fr/">Laboratory
for Analysis and Architecture of Systems</a> (CNRS/LAAS), France. The motivation
was, on the one hand, to ease the software maintenance tasks for the robots
that are used there. On the other hand, roboticists at CNRS/LAAS have always
fostered an open-source development model for the software they were
developing. In order to help people working with the laboratory to get the
LAAS software running outside the laboratory, a package management system was
necessary.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Although robotpkg was an innovative project in the robotics community (it
started in 2006), a lot of general-purpose software packages management systems
were readily available at this time for a great variety of Unix-based systems.
The main requirements that we wanted robotpkg to fullfill were listed and the
best existing package management system was chosen as a starting point. The
biggest requirement was the capacity of the system to adapt to the nature of
the robotic software, being available mostly in form of source code only (no
binary packages), with unfrequent stable releases. robotpkg had thus to deal
mostly with source code and automate the compilation of the packages. The
system chosen as a starting point was <a href="http://www.pkgsrc.org">The NetBSD
Packages Collection</a> (pkgsrc). robotpkg can be considered as a fork of this
project and it is still very similar to pkgsrc in many points, although some
simplifications were made in order to provide a tool geared toward people that
are not computer scientists but roboticists.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Due to its origins, robotpkg provides many packages developed at LAAS. It is
however not limited to such packages and contains, in fact, quite some other
software useful to roboticists. Of course, robotpkg is not meant to be a
general purpose packaging system (although there would be no technical
restriction to this) and will never contain widely available packages that can
be found on any modern Unix distribution. Yet, robotpkg currently contains
roughly one hundred and fifty packages, including:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ul>
<li> architecture/genom - The LAAS Generator of Robotic Components
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> architecture/openrtm - The robotic distributed middleware from AIST, Japan
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> middleware/yarp - The "other", yet famous, robot platform
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> ...just to name a few.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.2"></a><h2>
1.2 Why robotpkg?</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
robotpkg provides the following key features:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ul>
<li> Easy building of software from source as well as the creation and
installation of binary packages. The source and latest patches are retrieved
from a master download site, checksum verified, then built on your system.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> All packages are installed in a consistent directory tree, including
binaries, libraries, man pages and other documentation.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> Package dependencies, including when performing package updates, are
handled automatically.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> The installation prefix, acceptable software licenses and build-time
options for a large number of packages are all set in a simple, central
configuration file.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> The entire framework source (not including the package distribution
files themselves) is freely available under a BSD license, so you may extend
and adapt robotpkg to your needs, like robotpkg was adapted from pkgsrc.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
One question often asked by people is "why was robotpkg forked from pkgsrc
instead of integrating the packages into pkgsrc?". This is indeed a very good
question and the following paragraphs try to answer it.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
First, robotpkg is not meant to be a replacement for the system's package
management tool (it does not superseeds pkgsrc, dpkg, macports etc.). The goal
is to package software that is not widely available on a platform, and which is
mostly "lab software" (generally of lesser quality than widely available
software). Those packages change (a lot) more often, and more
drastically. Thus, robotpkg is a little bit closer to a "development" tool than
pkgsrc. Other "system packages" are correctly handled by a number of
packaging tools, and there is no need for a new tool.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Currently, pkgsrc mixes both infrastructure and packages descriptions
themselves. For someone working on e.g. Linux, checking-out
the whole pkgsrc tree would be cumbersome: it would be redundant with the base
Linux package system, plus it would be difficult to isolate the specific
robotic packages from the rest (the rest usually being available in the base
system). robotpkg currently suffers from the same symptom: this may change in
the future if the need for several package repositories becomes blatant.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
robotpkg provides a number of features not available in pkgsrc (and probably
not really useful to pkgsrc either). The most important feature is to be able
to detect "system packages", that are considered as ëxternal software not in
robotpkg but usually available on a unix system". pkgsrc has a similar system
but much more limited - to a few base packages only. This is so because pkgsrc
is a full-fledged package system. Thus, it aims at being self contained, while
robotpkg does not.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Finally, there are a number of additions/changes to the pkgsrc infrastructure
that correspond to legitimate users requests and the specifc workflow in which
robotpkg is used. For instance, robotpkg provides the possibility to generate
an archive of a package from a specific tag in a source repository "on the
fly" or just bypass the archive generation and work directly from the source
repository to install the software. This later workflow is not encouraged, but
it is convenient to quickly test a -current version of some software to see if
it causes any problem. Those features could be ported back to pkgsrc if the
pkgsrc team would find them useful. In the meantime, robotpkg provides a
good testbed for them.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Still, robotpkg directly uses many of the pkgsrc tools unchanged and the binary
packages are fully compatible.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.3"></a><h2>
1.3 Supported platforms</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
robotpkg consists of a source distribution. After retrieving the required
source, you can be up and running with robotpkg in just minutes!
<div class="p"><!----></div>
robotpkg does not have much requirements by itself and it can work on a wide
variety of systems as long as they provide a GNU-make utility, a working
C-compiler and a small, reasonably standard subset of Unix commands (like sed,
awk, find, grep ...). However, individual packages might have their specific
requirements. The following platforms have been reported to be supported
reasonably well:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div style="text-align:center">
<table border="1" class="tabular">
<tr><td align="center">Platform </td><td align="center">Version
</td></tr><tr><td id="hline" colspan=0></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Fedora </td><td align="center">25 or above</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Ubuntu </td><td align="center">12.04 or above</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Debian </td><td align="center">7 or above</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">NetBSD </td><td align="center">6 or above</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Darwin </td><td align="center">Partial support - infrastructure works, individual packages may not</td></tr></table>
</div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Any other Unix-like platform should usually work.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.4"></a><h2>
1.4 Overview</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This document is divided into three parts. <a href="#chapter:user">The first one</a>
describes how one can use one of the packages in the Robotics Package
Collection, either by installing a precompiled binary package, or by building
one's own copy using robotpkg. <a href="#chapter:developer">The second part</a>
explains how to prepare a package so it can be easily built by other users
without knowing about the package's building details.
<a href="#chapter:internal">The third part</a> is intended for those who want to
understand how robotpkg is implemented.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.5"></a><h2>
1.5 Terminology</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Here is a description of all the terminology used within this document.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<dl>
<dt><b>Package</b></dt>
<dd> A set of files and building instructions that describe what's
necessary to build a certain piece of software using robotpkg. Packages are
traditionally stored under <tt>/opt/robotpkg</tt>.</dd>
<dt><b>robotpkg</b></dt>
<dd> This is the The Robotics Package Collection. It handles
building (compiling), installing, and removing of packages.</dd>
<dt><b>Distfile</b></dt>
<dd> This term describes the file or files that are provided by
the author of the piece of software to distribute his work. All the changes
necessary to build are reflected in the corresponding package. Usually the
distfile is in the form of a compressed tar-archive, but other types are
possible, too. Distfiles are usually stored below <tt>
/opt/robotpkg/distfiles</tt>.</dd>
<dt><b>Precompiled/binary package</b></dt>
<dd> A set of binaries built with robotpkg from
a distfile and stuffed together in a single <tt>.tgz</tt> file so it can be
installed on machines of the same machine architecture without the need to
recompile. Packages are usually generated in <tt>/opt/robotpkg/packages</tt>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Sometimes, this is referred to by the term "package" too, especially in
the context of precompiled packages.</dd>
<dt><b>Program</b></dt>
<dd> The piece of software to be installed which will be
constructed from all the files in the distfile by the actions defined in the
corresponding package.</dd>
</dl>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.6"></a><h2>
1.6 Roles involved in robotpkg</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<dl>
<dt><b>robotpkg users</b></dt>
<dd> The robotpkg users are people who use the packages
provided by robotpkg. Typically they are student working in robotics. The
usage of the software that is <em>inside</em> the packages is not covered by
the robotpkg guide.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
There are two kinds of robotpkg users: Some only want to install pre-built
binary packages. Others build the robotpkg packages from source, either for
installing them directly or for building binary packages themselves. For
robotpkg users, <a href="#chapter:user">Part <a href="#chapter:user">2</a></a> should provide
all necessary documentation.</dd>
<dt><b>package maintainers</b></dt>
<dd> A package maintainer creates packages as
described in <a href="#chapter:developer">Part <a href="#chapter:developer">3</a></a>.</dd>
<dt><b>infrastructure developers</b></dt>
<dd> These people are involved in all those
files that live in the <tt>mk/</tt> directory and below. Only these people
should need to read through
<a href="#chapter:internal">Part </a>, though others might be
curious, too.</dd>
</dl>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.7"></a><h2>
1.7 Typography</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
When giving examples for commands, shell prompts are used to show if the
command should/can be issued as root, or if "normal" user privileges are
sufficient. We use a <tt>#</tt> for root's shell prompt, and a <tt>%</tt> for
users' shell prompt, assuming they use the C-shell or tcsh.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_chAp2"></a><h1>
2 <br />The robotpkg user's guide</h1>
<a id="chapter:user">
</a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Basically, there are two ways of using robotpkg. The first is to only install
the package tools and to use binary packages that someone else has prepared.
The second way is to install the programs from source. Then you are able to
build your own packages, and you can still use binary packages from someone
else. Sections in this document will detail both approaches where appropriate.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.1"></a><h2>
2.1 Where to get robotpkg and how to keep it up-to-date</h2> <a id="section:getting">
</a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Before you download and extract the files, you need to decide where you want to
extract them and where you want robotpkg to install packages. By defaut, the
<tt>/opt/openrobots</tt> directory is used. In the rest of this document, the
installation path is called the <em>prefix</em>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<tt>robotpkg</tt> will <em>never</em> require administration privileges by itself.
We thus recommend that you do not install or run robotpkg as the root user. If
something ever goes really wrong, it might go less wrong if it is not running
as root. If you want to install to the default location <tt>/opt/openrobots</tt>,
we recommend that you create this directory owned by a regular user.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Creating or using <tt>/opt/openrobots</tt> typically requires administration (<em>
a.k.a.</em> "<tt>root</tt>") privileges. If you don't have such privileges (or if
you want to install to a different location), you have to unpack the sources
and install the binary packages in another prefix. If you don't have any
special administration rights on the target machine, a safe bet is to choose
the <tt>$HOME/openrobots</tt> location, as the <tt>$HOME</tt> directory will
always be writable by yourself.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Any prefix will work, but please note that you should choose an installation
path which is dedicated to robotpkg packages and not shared with other programs
(e.g., we do not recommend to use a prefix of <tt>/usr</tt>). Also, you should
not try to add any of your own files or directories (such as <tt>src/</tt>) below
the prefix tree. This will prevent possible conflicts between programs and
other files installed by the package system and whatever else may have been
installed there.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Finally, the installation path shall not contain white-space or other
characters that are interpreted specially by the shell and some other programs:
use only letters, digits, underscores and dashes.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The rest of this document will assume that you are using <tt>/opt/openrobots</tt>
as the prefix. You should adapt this path to whatever prefix you choosed.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.1.1"></a><h3>
2.1.1 Getting the binary bootstrap kit</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
At the moment, the binary bootstrap kit is not available. Please get the <tt>
robotpkg</tt> sources as described in the next section.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.1.2"></a><h3>
2.1.2 Getting robotpkg for source compilation</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<tt>robotpkg</tt> sources are distributed <em>via</em> the
<a href="http://git-scm.com/"><tt>git</a></tt> software content management system. <tt>
git</tt> will probably be readily available on your system but if you don't have it
installed or if you are unsure about it, contact your local system
administrator.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
There are two download methods: the anonymous one and the authenticated
one:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ul>
<li> Anonymous download is the recommended method if you don't intend to
work on the robotpkg infrastructure itself, nor commit any changes or
packages additions back to the robotpkg main repository. Furthermore, the
possibility to send contributions via patches is still open.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
As your regular user, simply run in a shell:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd /opt/openrobots
% git clone git://git.openrobots.org/robots/robotpkg
% # or
% git clone https://git.openrobots.org/robots/robotpkg.git
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> Authenticated download requires a valid login on the main robotpkg
repository, and will give you full commit access to this repository. Simply
run the following:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd /opt/openrobots
% git clone ssh://git@git.openrobots.org/robots/robotpkg
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.1.3"></a><h3>
2.1.3 Keeping robotpkg up-to-date</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<tt>robotpkg</tt> is a living thing: updates to the packages are made
perdiodicaly, problems are fixed, enhancements are developed... If you
downloaded the robotpkg sources via git, you should keep it up-to-date so that
you get the most recent packages descriptions. This is done by running <tt>
git pull</tt> in the robotpkg source directory:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd /opt/openrobots/robotpkg
% git pull
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
When you update robotpkg, the git program will only touch those files that are
registered in the git repository. That means that any packages that you created
on your own will stay unmodified. If you change files that are managed by git,
later updates will try to merge your changes with those that have been done by
others. See the <tt>git-pull</tt> manual for details.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you want to be informed of package additions and other updates, a public
mailing list is available for your reading pleasure. Go to
<a href="https://sympa.laas.fr/sympa/info/robotpkg"><tt>https://sympa.laas.fr/sympa/info/robotpkg</tt></a> for more information and
subscription.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.2"></a><h2>
2.2 Bootstrapping robotpkg</h2> <a id="section:bootstrapping">
</a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Once you have downloaded the robotpkg sources or the binary bootstrap kit as
described in <a href="#section:getting">Section <a href="#section:getting">2.1</a></a>, a minimal
set of the administrative package management utilities must be installed on
your system before you can use robotpkg. This is called the "bootstrap
phase" and should be done only once, the very first time you download
robotpkg.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.2.1"></a><h3>
2.2.1 Bootstrapping via the binary kit</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
At the moment, the binary bootstrap kit is not available. Please bootstrap <tt>
robotpkg</tt> as described in the next section.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.2.2"></a><h3>
2.2.2 Bootstrapping from source</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You will need a working C compiler and the GNU-make utility version 3.81 or
later. If you have extracted the robotpkg archive into the standard <tt>
/opt/openrobots/robotpkg</tt> location, installing the bootstrap kit from source
should then be as simple as:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd /opt/openrobots/robotpkg/bootstrap
% ./bootstrap
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This will install various utilities into <tt>/opt/openrobots/sbin</tt>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Should you prefer another installation path, you could use the <tt>--prefix</tt>
option to change the default installation prefix. For instance, configuring
robotpkg to install programs into the openrobots directory in your home
directory can be done like this:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd robotpkg/bootstrap
% ./bootstrap --prefix=${HOME}/openrobots
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<b>After the bootstrap script has run, a message indicating the success
should be displayed. If you choosed a non-standard installation path, read
this message carefuly</b>, as it contains instructions that you have to follow in
order to setup your shell environment correctly. These instructions are
described in the next section.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<h4>Configuring your environment</h4>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you configured robotpkg, during the bootstrap phase, to install to some
other location than <tt>/opt/openrobots</tt>, you have to setup manually your
shell environment so that it contains a few variables holding the installation
path. Assuming you invoked bootstrap with <tt>-prefix=/path/to/openrobots</tt>,
you have two options that are compatible with each other:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ul>
<li> Add the directory <tt>/path/to/openrobots/sbin</tt> to your <tt>PATH</tt>
variable. robotpkg will then be able to find its administrative tools
automatically and from that recover other configuration information. This is
the preferred method.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> Create the environment variable <tt>ROBOTPKG_BASE</tt> and set its value
to <tt>/path/to/openrobots</tt>. robotpkg will look for this variable first,
so it takes precedence over the first method. This is the method you have
to choose if you have configured several instances of robotpkg in your
system. This is ony useful in some circumstances and is not normally needed.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you don't know how to setup environment variables permanently in your
system, please refer to your shell's manual or contact your local system
administrator.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<h4>The bootstrap script usage</h4>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The <tt>bootstrap</tt> script will by default install the package administrative
tools in <tt>/opt/openrobots/sbin</tt>, use <tt>gcc</tt> as the C compiler and <tt>
make</tt> as the GNU-make program. This behaviour can be fine-tuned by using the
following options:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<dl>
<dt><b><tt>--prefix <path></b></dt>
<dd> will select the prefix location where
programs will be installed in.</tt></dd>
<dt><b><tt>--sysconfdir <path></b></dt>
<dd> defaults to <tt><prefix>/etc</tt>. This is the
path to the robotpkg configuration file. Other packages configuration files
(if any) will also be stored in this directory.</tt></dd>
<dt><b><tt>--pkgdbdir <path></b></dt>
<dd> defaults to <tt><prefix>/var/db/pkg</tt>. This
is the path to the package database directory where robotpkg will do its
internal bookkeeping.</tt></dd>
<dt><b><tt>--compiler <program></b></dt>
<dd> defaults to <tt>gcc</tt>. Use this option if
you want to use a different C compiler.</tt></dd>
<dt><b><tt>--make <program></b></dt>
<dd> defaults to <tt>make</tt>. Use this option if you
want to use a different make program. This program should be compatible with
GNU-make.</tt></dd>
<dt><b><tt>--help</b></dt>
<dd> displays the <tt>bootstrap</tt> usage. The comprehensive
list of recognized options will be displayed.</tt></dd>
</dl>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.3"></a><h2>
2.3 Using robotpkg</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
After obtaining <tt>robotpkg</tt> , the <tt>robotpkg</tt> directory now contains a set of
packages, organized into categories. You can browse the online index of
packages, or run <tt>make index</tt> from the <tt>robotpkg</tt> directory to build
local <tt>index.html</tt> files for all packages, viewable with any web browser
such as <tt>lynx</tt> or <tt>firefox</tt>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<tt>robotpkg</tt> is essentially based on the <tt>make(1)</tt> program. All actions are
triggered by invoking <tt>make</tt> with the proper target. The following sections
document the most useful ones and
<a href="#section:using:targets">section <a href="#section:using:targets">2.3.7</a></a> recaps a more
comprehensive list.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.3.1"></a><h3>
2.3.1 Building packages from source</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The first step for building a package is downloading the <em>distfiles</em>
(i.e. the unmodified source). If they have not yet been downloaded, <tt>robotpkg</tt>
will fetch them automatically and place them in the <tt>robotpkg/distfiles</tt>
directory.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Once the software has been downloaded, any patches will be applied and the
package will be compiled for you. This may take some time depending on your
computer, and how many other packages the software depends on and their compile
time.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
For example, type the following commands at the shell prompt to build the
robotpkg documentation package:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% cd /opt/openrobots/robotpkg
% cd doc/robotpkg
% make
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The next stage is to actually install the newly compiled package onto your
system. While you are still in the directory for whatever package you are
installing, you can do this by entering:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% make install
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Installing the package on your system does not require you to be root (except
for a few specific packages). However, if you bootstraped with a prefix for
which you don't have writing permissions, <tt>robotpkg</tt> has a <span class="roman">
just-in-time-sudo</span> feature, which allows you to become <tt>root</tt> for the
actual installation step.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
That's it, the software should now be installed under the prefix of the
packages tree - <tt>/opt/openrobots</tt> by default - and setup for use.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You can now enter:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% make clean
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
to remove the compiled files in the work directory, as you shouldn't need them
any more. If other packages were also added to your system (dependencies) to
allow your program to compile, you can also tidy these up with the command:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% make clean-depends
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Since the three tasks of building, installing and cleaning correspond to the
typical usage of <tt>robotpkg</tt> , a helper target doing all these tasks exists and is
called <tt>update</tt>. Thus, to intall a package with a single command, you can
simply run:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% make update
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
In addition, <tt>make update</tt> will also recompile all the installed packages
that were depending on the package that you are updating. This can be quite
time consuming if you are updating a low-level package. Also, note that all
packages that depend on the package you are updating will be deinstalled
first and unavailable in your system until all packages are recompiled and
reinstalled.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Occasionally, people want to "look under the covers" to see what is going on
when a package is building or being installed. This may be for debugging
purposes, or out of simple curiosity. A number of utility values have been
added to help with this.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ol type="1">
<li> If you invoke the <tt>make</tt> command with <tt>PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=1</tt>, then
a huge amount of information will be displayed. For example,
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<pre>
% make patch PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=1
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
will show all the commands that are invoked, up to and including the
"patch" stage. Using <tt>PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2</tt> will give you even
more details.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> If you want to know the value of a certain <tt>make</tt> definition, then
the <tt>VARNAME</tt> variable should be used, in conjunction with the <tt>
show-var</tt> target. e.g. to show the expansion of the <tt>make</tt> variable