Packaging Base

I am currently working on the scripts for packaging Base.

Manual

I wrote the manual for previous versions of Base directly in troff. In the new release, however, the manual is written in Markdown. The primary reason for the change is that Markdown can be easily viewed on GitHub, but the improved readability of the source is nice as well. The Markdown source is converted to troff format, for use with the man command, using Pandoc.

Unfortunately, Pandoc would be a really large build dependency. That is not a significant issue for building .deb or .rpm packages, which is done on my own machine, but it is a significant issue for people who install from source or use package systems that build from source.

After a fair amount of internal debate, I decided to build the manual as part of the release process and commit the troff version to the repository. While this is generally considered bad practice, I think that it is worth it in this case. Pandoc is no longer needed to install from source. Another benefit is that the date displayed in the manual is fixed to the release date.

.deb Packages

I implemented .deb package building using Docker. Running make deb creates a Debian container, with the build directory mounted, and runs a build script. The build script does the following:

1. Install OS packages for building .deb packages
2. Configure a user with the same UID and GID as the mounted build directory
3. Build a .deb package, making use of dh_make and dpkg-buildpackage
4. Copy all built artifacts to the mounted build directory

Running make deb-test creates a Debian container, with the .deb package mounted, and runs a shell. One can install the package and confirm the installation within the container.

This works fine, but installing the OS packages can be time consuming. I am considering creating a Docker image with these packages installed, for use with multiple projects.

.rpm Packages

I will implement scripts for building .rpm packages next, using Docker. It has been a long time since I have created an .rpm package!

Arch PKGBUILD

I would like to create a PKGBUILD for Base, as well as register it in AUR. It turns out Arch already has a package named base! (It is a meta-package that depends on a minimal package set for a basic Arch installation.) I am considering alternate names to use for the Arch package. My current favorite is base-env, short for Base environment.

Nix Package

I would like to create a Nix package for Base and submit it to nixpkgs.

Current Plans

I plan on implementing .rpm package building for the pending release. I would really like to release soon, because I have other projects to work on (such as this website), though, so I plan on waiting to work on the Arch PKGBUILD and Nix Package until a future release.