Abuild and Helpers

To build a package, abuild is used. Besides the package building functionality, options for other package maintainance tasks are also provided.

If you just want to build a package from an APKBUILD file, only two command are needed.

First cd into the package directory (the directory with the APKBUILD file). Then run:

abuild checksum && abuild -r

To use the command above, you have to be in the abuild group. Also, if you haven't already, you will need to setup your abuild environment.

Below all options and commands for abuild are listed.

abuild [options] [-P REPODEST] [-s SRCDEST] [-D DESCRIPTION] [cmd] ...

abuild options

• -A Print CARCH and exit
• -c Enable colored output
• -d Disable dependency checking
• -D Set APKINDEX description (default: $repo $(git describe))
• -f Force specified cmd (skip checks: apk up to date, arch, libc)
• -F Force run as root
• -h Show this help
• -i Install PKG after successful build
• -k Keep built packages, even if APKBUILD or sources are newer
• -K Keep buildtime temp dirs and files (srcdir/pkgdir/deps)
• -m Disable colors (monochrome)
• -P Set REPODEST as the repository location for created packages
• -q Quiet
• -r Install missing dependencies from system repository (using sudo)
• -s Set source package destination directory
• -u Recursively build and upgrade all dependencies (using sudo)
• -v Verbose: show every command as it is run (very noisy)

abuild commands

• build Compile and install package into $pkgdir
• check Run any defined tests concerning the package
• checksum Generate checksum to be included in APKBUILD
• clean Remove temp build and install dirs
• cleancache Remove downloaded files from $SRCDEST
• cleanoldpkg Remove binary packages except current version
• cleanpkg Remove already built binary and source package
• deps Install packages listed in makedepends and depends
• fetch Fetch sources to $SRCDEST and verify checksums
• index Regenerate indexes in $REPODEST
• listpkg List target packages
• package Create package in $PKGDEST
• prepare Apply patches
• rootbld Build package in clean chroot
• rootpkg Run 'package', the split functions and create apks as fakeroot
• sanitycheck Basic sanity check of APKBUILD
• snapshot Create a $giturl or $svnurl snapshot and upload to $disturl
• sourcecheck Check if remote source package exists upstream
• srcpkg Make a source package
• undeps Uninstall packages listed in makedepends and depends
• unpack Unpack sources to $srcdir
• up2date Compare target and sources dates
• verify Verify checksums

• Abuild and Helpers

Install package abuild-rootbld:

apk add abuild-rootbld

Now you can build your source packages in an unprivileged sandbox based on bubblewrap with the command

abuild rootbld

If the build process needs network access there has to bet set the net option in APKBUILD.

There has to be done some additional configuration to use the rootbld sandbox in a Docker container.

The tool abump is a utility to bump pkgver in APKBUILD files if the package gets an update to a newer upstream release.

abump [-hR]

abump options

• -h Show this help
• -R Run abuild with -R for recursive building
• -k Keep existing packages

If you want to bump or reset the pkgrel value of your APKBUILD or test your APKBUILD files, apkgrel can assist you.

apkgrel -a|-h|-s NUM|-t|-z [-f] FILE...

apkgrel options

• -a Add 1 to current pkgrel
• -f Force, even if given files are not in proper format
• -h Show this help
• -s Set pkgrel to NUM
• -t Only verify that files are in proper format
• -z Set pkgrel to 0

To create the actual APKBUILD file newapkbuild can serve you a template to start with. It will create a directory with the given package name, place an example/template APKBUILD file in the given directory, and fill some variables if those are provided.

newapkbuild packagename

newapkbuild options

• -n Set package name to NAME
• -d Set package description (pkgdesc) to DESC
• -l Set package license to LICENSE
• -u Set package URL
• -a Create autotools package (use ./configure ...)
• -C Create CMake package (Assume cmake/ is there)
• -m Create meson package (Assume meson.build is there)
• -p Create perl package (Assume Makefile.PL is there)
• -y Create python package (Assume setup.py is there)
• -s Use sourceforge source URL
• -c Copy a sample init.d, conf.d, and install script to new directory
• -f Force even if directory already exist
• -h Show this help

The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) provides a large collection of perl software and documentation. apkbuild-cpan helps with the creation of APKBUILD for perl modules from CPAN.

apkbuild-cpan [create <Module::Name> | check | recreate | update | upgrade]

The Python Package Index (PyPi) is a repository of software and libraries for the Python programming language. apkbuild-pypi helps with the creation of APKBUILD for python package hosted at PyPI.

apkbuild-pypi [create <package> | check | recreate | update | upgrade

abuild-sign is for signing indexes.

abuild-sign [-hq] [-k PRIVKEY] [-p PUBKEY] INDEXFILE...

abuild-sign options

• -h Show this help
• -k The private key to use for signing
• -p The name of public key. apk add will look for /etc/apk/keys/PUBKEY

apkbuild-tar [--hash[=<algorithm>]] [--cut]

apkbuild-tar options

• --hash[=sha1|md5] Read tar archive from stdin, precalculate hash for regular entries and output tar archive on stdout
• --cut Remove the end of file tar record

buildrepo creates a local package repository for you.

buildrepo [-a APORTSDIR] [-d REPODIR] [-hp] [-l LOGPREFIX ] [-r DEPREPO] REPOSITORY...

buildrepo options

• -a Set the aports base dir to APORTSDIR instead of $HOME/aports
• -d Set destination repository base dir to REPODIR instead of $HOME/packages
• -h Show this help and exit
• -l Send build to logfile, prefixed by LOGPREFIX
• -p Purge obsolete packages from REPODIR after build
• -r Dependencies are found in DEPREPO

For abuild a public/private rsa key pair is needed. abuild-keygen does the generation of those keys for you.

abuild-keygen -a -i

abuild-keygen options

• -a Set PACKAGER_PRIVKEY=<generated key> in abuild.conf
• -i Install public key into /etc/apk/keys using sudo
• -h Show this help
• -n Non-interactive. Use defaults
• -q Quiet mode

In older versions of Alpine, we had to manually create keys for signing packages and indexes. This explains how. Nowadays you can just use abuild-keygen.

Since the public key needs to be unique for each developer, the email address should be used as name for the public key.

Create the private key:

openssl genrsa -out emailaddress.priv 2048

Create the public key:

openssl rsa -in emailaddress.priv -pubout -out /etc/apk/keys/emailaddress

The public key should be distributed and installed into /etc/apk/keys on the alpine box that will install the packages. The private key, when created by abuild, is installed into ~/.abuild/$something.rsa. This basically means that the main developer's public keys should be in /etc/apk/keys on all Alpine boxes.