------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BRIEF INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A binary package built with xbps is a normal tar(1) archive, compressed with any of the formats that libarchive supports, and it has the following structure: Package metadata ----------------- /INSTALL /REMOVE /files.plist /props.plist Package data ----------------- /usr /var /etc ... Metadata info is stored in the "/var/db/xbps/metadata/$pkgname" directory and two files will be always be present: files.plist and props.plist. The files.plist file contains the list of files/links/dirs that package will install, as well as SHA256 hashes for files. The props.plist file contains package metadata properties and has the following structure: <dict> <key>pkgname</key> <string>foo</string> <key>version</key> <string>3.40</string> <key>maintainer</key> <string>The Master BOFH <bofh@baobab.org> </string> <key>short_desc</key> <string>Foo is a virtual package</string> <key>long_desc</key> <string> Foo is a virtual package to show how the metadata props.plist file works with xbps handling binary packages.</string> <key>architecture</key> <string>x86_64</string> <key>installed_size</key> <integer>500000</integer> <key>configuration_files</key> <array> <string>/etc/foo.conf</string> ... </array> <key>run_depends</key> <array> <string>bofh-2.0</string> <string>blab-1.1</string> ... </array> ... </dict> The INSTALL/REMOVE executables allows you to trigger any action at pre/post installation/removal of the binary package. The package's dictionary will also be written into the repository's package index file, that describes information about a binary package on it. See the BINPKG_REPOSITORY file for more info about repositories. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HOW TO USE BINARY PACKAGES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To install binary packages, firstly a repository must be created as well as some binary packages for it. The flow for this task is: 1- xbps-src install <package> 2- xbps-src build-pkg all [requires sudo access] 3- xbps-repo genindex $XBPS_PACKAGES 4- xbps-repo add $XBPS_PACKAGES 5- xbps-bin install -r /rootdir <package> So the tasks are: install the package into destdir (and all its dependencies), build the binary package from the required package, generate the repository index, add the repository into the pool and install the binary package. Please note that by default, the xbps-* utils accept the -r flag, to specify the root directory for all operations, in that case the package will be installed into <rootdir> and metadata files into <rootdir>/var/db/xbps. Don't forget to set this flag if you aren't using xbps as the primary package manager in your system, otherwise it could overwrite some files! See the BINPKG_REPOSITORY file for more info about repositories for binary packages or SRCPKG_INFO for source packages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Juan Romero Pardines <xtraeme@gmail.com>