freebsd-mkmnfst

Basic MANIFEST generator for building pkg-create(8) packages

Disclaimer

The recommended and "official" FreeBSD way of building and maintaining packages is through the Ports Collection, and is described in Porter's Handbook. If you're building packages for anyone other than yourself, you should probably stick with that approach.

Description

The mkmnfst script generates the minimal viable MANIFEST file, which can be used to build packages using pkg-create(8). It expects one or more (exact) package names as arguments, which will be resolved as dependencies upon installation. Refer to the manual page of pkg-create(8) for information on how to extend the generated MANIFEST file for more advanced uses, such as packaging and distributing arbitrary files with your package.

Example usage

Let's assume you want to build a very basic package that installs other packages (i.e a metapackage), say bash, tmux, curl and vim-tiny:

$ ./mkmnfst bash tmux curl vim-tiny > basic_metapkg

The basic_metapkg at this point contains only the dependency definition and the minimal valid structure required to produce a package. You still need to edit it and replace the FIXME placeholders:

$ cat basic_metapkg 
name: FIXME
version: FIXME
origin: FIXME
comment: FIXME
www: FIXME
maintainer: FIXME
prefix: /usr/local
desc: <<EOD
    FIXME
EOD
deps: {
    bash: {origin: shells/bash, version: 4.4.19},
    tmux: {origin: sysutils/tmux, version: 2.6_1},
    curl: {origin: ftp/curl, version: 7.60.0},
    vim-tiny: {origin: editors/vim-tiny, version: 8.0.1638},
}

Eventually, you would end-up with something in the lines of the following:

name: dep-basic
version: 20180617_01
origin: local
comment: Metapackage for basic dependency resolution
www: http://www.example.com
maintainer: email@example.com
prefix: /usr/local
desc: <<EOD
    Metapackage for resolution of basic dependencies.

    This package installs the following applications:
    - bash
    - tmux
    - curl
    - vim-tiny
EOD
deps: {
    bash: {origin: shells/bash, version: 4.4.19},
    tmux: {origin: sysutils/tmux, version: 2.6_1},
    curl: {origin: ftp/curl, version: 7.60.0},
    vim-tiny: {origin: editors/vim-tiny, version: 8.0.1638},
}

Now that you have a valid MANIFEST file, you can use it to produce a package with pkg-create(8):

$ pkg create -M ./basic_metapkg

You should now have dep-basic-20180617_01.txz in your current working directory. You can use this package as any other FreeBSD package:

$ pkg info -F dep-basic-20180617_01.txz 
dep-basic-20180617_01
Name           : dep-basic
Version        : 20180617_01
Origin         : local
Architecture   : FreeBSD:11:amd64
Prefix         : /usr/local
Categories     : 
Licenses       : 
Maintainer     : email@example.com
WWW            : http://www.example.com
Comment        : Metapackage for basic dependency resolution
Annotations    :
	FreeBSD_version: 1101001
Flat size      : 0.00B
Description    :
Metapackage for resolution of basic dependencies.

    This package installs the following applications:
    - bash
    - tmux
    - curl
    - vim-tiny

At this point, you can either copy the package to your custom repository (preferred), or just distribute it to your systems and install it directly:

$ pkg install ./dep-basic-20180617_01.txz 
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
The following 10 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
	dep-basic: 20180617_01
	bash: 4.4.19
	indexinfo: 0.3.1
	gettext-runtime: 0.19.8.1_1
	tmux: 2.6_1
	libevent: 2.1.8_1
	curl: 7.60.0
	libnghttp2: 1.31.1
	ca_root_nss: 3.37.3
	vim-tiny: 8.0.1638

Number of packages to be installed: 10

The process will require 19 MiB more space.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[pkg] [1/1] Installing indexinfo-0.3.1...
[pkg] Extracting indexinfo-0.3.1: 100%
[pkg] [1/10] Installing gettext-runtime-0.19.8.1_1...
[pkg] [1/10] Extracting gettext-runtime-0.19.8.1_1: 100%
[pkg] [2/10] Installing libevent-2.1.8_1...
[pkg] [2/10] Extracting libevent-2.1.8_1: 100%
[pkg] [3/10] Installing libnghttp2-1.31.1...
[pkg] [3/10] Extracting libnghttp2-1.31.1: 100%
[pkg] [4/10] Installing ca_root_nss-3.37.3...
[pkg] [4/10] Extracting ca_root_nss-3.37.3: 100%
[pkg] [5/10] Installing bash-4.4.19...
[pkg] [5/10] Extracting bash-4.4.19: 100%
[pkg] [6/10] Installing tmux-2.6_1...
[pkg] [6/10] Extracting tmux-2.6_1: 100%
[pkg] [7/10] Installing curl-7.60.0...
[pkg] [7/10] Extracting curl-7.60.0: 100%
[pkg] [8/10] Installing vim-tiny-8.0.1638...
[pkg] [8/10] Extracting vim-tiny-8.0.1638: 100%
[pkg] [9/10] Installing dep-basic-20180617_01...