The Vector SIL Kit Packaging REPO

Prerequisites

Terminology

If during the course of this README you stumble upon $VERSION, this is a short placeholder for the typical SEMVER $MAJOR.$MINOR.$REVISION placeholder. Placeholderception if you will!

Packages

To build the libsilkit4 package, the following package related tools are needed:

Ubuntu:

• debhelper
• devscripts
• dh-cmake
• python 3

Fedora:

• fedora-packager tools (installs rpm-build, fedpkg, mock and more tools)
• fedora-review

To build sil-kit itself, you will need the following packages:

• cmake
• ninja-build
• clang/llvm

Install these packages via:

# Debian/Ubuntu
> sudo apt install debhelper dpkg-dev devscripts dh-make cmake ninja-build clang python3
# Fedora/RHEL
> sudo dnf install fedora-packager fedora-review cmake ninja-build clang python3

Currently we support building the packages on the following platforms:

• Ubuntu

  • 20.04
  • 22.04
  • 24.04

• Fedora

  • 40+

Setting up the build environment

sil-kit-pkg is setup to work with Github Actions out of the box. But since the main workhorse of the Workflow is the silkit_linux_packaging.py shellscript, which you can find in scripts/silkit_linux_packaging.py, you can also build it locally yourself!

The Config

The silkit_linux_packaging.py script uses a JSON config for its setup. These config options map to parameters that you can set in the github action.

Let's examine an example config to build a SIL Kit package:

{

    "SilKitInfo": {
          "url": "https://github.com/vectorgrp/sil-kit.git",
          "ref": "v4.0.54",
          "recursive": true,
          "is_local": false
    },
    "package_repo_path": "sil-kit-pkg",
    "version": {
          "major": 4,
          "minor": 0,
          "patch": 54,
          "suffix": ""
    },
    "pkgformat": "deb",
    "work_dir": "./workdir",
    "keep_temp": true,
    "output_dir": "./out",
    "platform": "Ubuntu-22.04"
}

• SilKitInfo

  • General information about the silkit sources

• url

  • The url to get the SIL Kit sources. can be a git URL or a local path. In our case we are fetching the sources directly from the upstream Github repo.

• ref

  • The git ref to be fetched, can be a branch or a tag or an actual commit id. In our case we are fetching the tag for version 4.0.54
  • only when using a git url

• recursive

  • Does a recursive clone with all submodules included
  • Only when using a git url

• is_local

  • Set to true when using a local path in the url field

• package_repo_path

  • The path to this (sil-kit-pkg) repo. Can be an absolute path or a path relative to from where you execute the silkit_linux_packaging.py script.

• version

  • The version of the SIL Kit package to be build

• major

  • The major version of the package

• minor

  • The minor version of the package

• patch

  • The patch version of the package

• suffix

  • Additional version suffix of the package

• pkgformat

  • Determines the package type to build. deb for Debian/Ubuntu builds. rpm for RedHat/Fedora builds.

• work_dir

  • The directory where the build is happening

• keep_temp

  • Keeps the working dir after finishing the build. Useful to debug build errors.

• outpur_dir

  • The directory where the (local) artifacts are copied to.

• platform

  • The platform to build for

  • Possible values are

    • Ubuntu-20.04
    • Ubuntu-22.04
    • Ubuntu-24.04
    • epel8
    • epel9
    • fc40

Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux

When build for the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) Repos, you need to create a symlink to the correct mock config, since epel-x is not the name of a valid config. The official SIL Kit RPM packages are built for ALMA Linux 9, so we can use the ALMA 9 config like this:

mkdir -p ~/.config/mock
ln -sf /etc/mock/alma+epel-9-x86_64.cfg ~/.config/mock/epel-9-x86_64.cfg

Mock will automatically look in the ~/.config/mock/ dir for a valid config with the platform name we provide. Creating a symlink with that name to the existing ALMA 9 config will provide this.

Additionally, you need to add your user to the mock group:

# If the group does not already exist
sudo groupadd mock
# Adding your $USER
sudo usermod -aG mock $USER

DEBIAN environment variables

Debian requires the Maintainer environment variables to be set correctly:

export DEBFULLNAME="Awesome Dev"
export DEBEMAIL="awesome_dev@your-domain.something"

Additional Parameters for the CI

In addition to the environment variables (used by build_deb.sh), the Github Action uses some more inputs to identify/store the correct artifacts

• debian_arch

  The cpu architecture the debian package is build for. Currently we only support/test on amd64

Building the package

Locally

Setting up the environment

Create the JSON config file according to The Config. If you build the package under Debian/Ubuntu, set the appropriate environment variables.

Building the package

Let's go through an exemplary build using the silkit_linux_packaging.py script. You can use the The Config config as a starter template. We assume that you have checked out the sil-kit-pkg repo at ~/workspace/sil-kit-pkg. Choose ~/workspace/workdir as the work_dir value and ~/workspace/out as the output_dir. If you build for Fedora, change the pkgformat to rpm and choose the platform according to your current Fedora release e.g. f40 for Fedora 40. You can get a list of all availbale platforms via fedpkg releases-info. Don't forget to symlink the correct config if you are building an epel package.

The rest of the config can use the template values. Then all you need to run is:

python3 sil-kit-pkg/scripts/silkit_linux_packaging.py --build-cfg ./my_config.json

2-5 minutes later a freshl build will be available in your designated output directory.

Github CI

If you have forked sil-kit-pkg and you can use Github Actions, this is how you can build a libsilkit4 package

How to get to the Action

• Click on the Actions tab in your Github repo
• Click on the Silkit Packaging Workflow tab
• Click on the Run Workflow tab

Setup for the Workflow

• SIL Kit Repository URL Set to the sil-kit github repo
• SIL Kit Source Repo ref Set to the branch/tag/commit id of the sil-kit repo you want to use
• sil-kit-pkg ref If you want to build a release you can set the this to a release tag
• Maintainer name (only used on Debian/Ubuntu) Name of the maintainer creating the package
• Maintainer email (only used on Debian/Ubuntu) Email of the maintainer creating the package

• DEBIAN_ARCH

  amd64

Click the Run Workflow Button. Packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Alma Linux 9 will be in the artifacts of this Workflow run.