Hacking:Common packaging mistakes - ParabolaWiki

# Hacking:Common packaging mistakes

Here's a list of common packaging mistakes.

- It's become convention to indent with two spaces. Not doing that isn't a mistake per se, but consistency is nice.
- Make sure you have a line beginning with "# Maintainer: ". Also having things like "# Maintainer (AUR): " is fine, but "# Maintainer (Parabola): " isn't a substitute for the plain version. A few packages do that; it's a mistake (popularized by lukeshu).
- Every instance of srcdir and pkgdir should be double-quoted.
- Network access cannot be used during build() or package(). (This is enforced by libremakepkg).
- If a package is named in depends, then it does not need to be mentioned in makedepends.
- Packages in base do not need to be mentioned in depends, unless the package being built is also in base (but they may need to be mentioned in makedepends).
- Packages in base-devel do not need to be mentioned in makedepends, unless the package being built is also in base-devel (but they may need to be mentioned in depends).
- The files in install= and changelog= should not be mentioned in source=()
- When creating a replacement for a package in a group, don't have the replacement be in the same group. Groups cannot contain conflicting members.
- The best practices for VCS packages have changed quite a bit.
  - The no-no's:
    - Don't use _gitroot and similar "underscore" variables (even though they are recommended in /usr/share/pacman/). They are deprecated in Arch as of pacman 4.1, require network during build(), and over-complicate things.
    - Don't have 'SKIP' entries in md5sums, except for *.sig and *.asc files.
      - That means don't use makepkg 4.1 VCS URLs directly in source=(), put them in mksource or a SRCBUILD instead.
    - Don't track a "branch", make sure you reference a specific commit or tag.
  - Luke's current recommendation:
    - Make sure you have libretools installed (If you are a packager, you should have done this anyway.)
    - set source=("https://repo.parabolagnulinux.org/other/$pkgname/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz") (use other/~username/ for personal repos) librefetch will know to automatically generate the file for you if it doesn't exist.
    - set mksource=("$pkgname-$pkgver::VCS-URL")
    - set mkmd5sums=('SKIP')
    - set md5sums with makepkg -g like any other package.
    - librestage/librerelease will also upload the generated source file for you.

Category:

- Hacking