fpkg

This name stands for foreign package!

"What is a 'foreign package'", you might ask:

That is how I call packages not available in the default distro repositories of a user. It can be from any source but those, although the script currently supports git and svn-based ones only.

"And how's that work?"

fpkg needs 4 files in order to run: the text file pkg.list, the directory ii/ present on the directory it'll work on, /etc/fpkg/ and related.

pkg.list contains a newline-separated list of all packages, and you currently have to register them manually. You can easily do this by running fpkg add.

The list contains the packages to check for updates and also a key to check if that individual package needs to be updated with --rebase (in case it comes from a git source) or not. A kinda crap way of implementing it, but hey, it works! I might try improving it in the future.

The ii directory contains little scripts written manually (with a template provided of course) for installing and uninstalling packages. Since not every package uses the same steps for building, that was the solution I came up with. fpkg add already redirects you to write those steps using your text editor of choice, though!

Then, as for the files in /etc/fpkg/···

• /etc/fpkg/fpkg.conf: the configuration file containing all information needed for fpkg to work according to your environment. See more below.
• /etc/fpkg/bashrc: the resource file for the Bash shell used by fpkg to work on your packages' directories. It's not a whole separate environment, but it's different enough to recognize it.
• /etc/fpkg/modules/: module files. Those tell fpkg how to perform updates, get commit messages and such. You must have it, otherwise nothing will even work at all.

Requirements

You just need Bash and know how variables work in it, pretty much. It's just for changing the script's program calls, nothing crazy.

Besides that, you'll also need the following (which most distros should already ship preinstalled):

• coreutils (cat, cut, echo, mkdir, stat, stty, tr)
• grep
• less
• sed
• make
• at least one of: git, svn (duh)

Setup

1. Simply install the program by running make. By default, this will install the script itself to /usr/local/bin/, along with the configuration file fpkg.conf and the bundled bashrc file to /etc/fpkg/. The modules are also installed to a subdirectory of that, modules/. The completion script, fpkg.bashcomplete, is then installed to /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/.

You may then change $PREFIX to whatever directory you'd like the script to be installed on.

2. Edit the configuration file /etc/fpkg.conf according to your setup. It currently has the following parameters:

• FPKG_ROOT: the core, the directory where all your foreign packages are located, for fpkg to handle them.
• EDITOR: set this to your preferred text editor. This is used to add and edit your .ii's.
• LESS: this is used by the pager program, less, to set how it behaves. By default, you get:
  • quit if the file fits in a single screen (-F);
  • process ANSI escape codes for colorized output (-R);
  • and tab width set to 4 characters (-x4).

3. Then, run fpkg add to register and write the .ii's for all the packages you have on $FPKG_ROOT.

4. Then, you may run fpkg update just to check if everything is working and if your stuff is up to date of course.

5. And that's it, you're set! Don't forget to run fpkg help to see some extra features as well!

Logging

This is used to track down the build process of a package, so that if something goes wrong, the user can just open the log file and find out.

On fpkg, logging works as follows:

• Two variables, $FPKG_LOG and $LOG_FMT, are commented out. They respectively correspond to the location of the log file and the format of the timestamp on the log file.
• Those variables are commented out by default, disabling the logging feature. To enable it, just uncomment them and make sure they're set (duh).

I'm not sure if I should keep it this way, it was the best I could think of.

Contributing

Any suggestions or issues? Open a new issue or make a pull request, that would be very appreciated!

And actually, I would say that just by using this script you're already contributing to the project :)