Re: [cobalt-developers] Making PKG file

[Michael Stauber <devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Matty,

> Hi does anyone have a dumb guide to creating PKGs. I basically want to
> create a PKG that just installs a few php files in to the /home/ dir. Is
> there a quick and simple way of doing this?

Some basics:

A PKG file can be either a tar archive, a tar.gz archive or a signed tarball.

The main components of the PKG file are the RPM files which are supposed to be 
installed. Then there are also several scripts inside which are run upon 
installation and deinstallation and most importantly there is also a packing 
list which contains basic information about the PKG and its payload.


The easy way is learning by vivisecting existing PKGs. Download a PKG file 
from PKGmaster.com or Solarspeed.net for the architecture you're wanting to 
develop a PKG.

Place the PKG file in an empty directory and unpack it:

tar zxvf *.pkg

Then examine the files and folders which were unpacked to get some general 
ideas.


There are two major PKG format differences between the non-sausalito enabled 
servers (RaQ1 up to and including RaQ4) and the ones which use Sausalito 
(Qube3, XTR, RaQ550).

Building PKGs for the Sausalito enabled servers is slightly more complicated, 
so I'd rather not go into too much explanations unless you plan to build PKGs 
for the Sausalito boxes.

Building PKGs stands and falls with your ability to create RPMs. Here are good 
starting places for learning how to build RPMs :

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/
http://home.fnal.gov/~dawson/howto/RPM-Build.html


People have sometimes built PKGs without using RPMs, but that approach is 
kinda unprofessional and beating the purpose of the PKG format.

-- 

With best regards,

Michael Stauber
mstauber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Unix/Linux Support Engineer