Build a Ubuntu Cloud Archive package

This is a small guide tested on Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 to rebuild packages from the Ubuntu Cloud Archive adding your own patches.

This is how I work to have patches merged upstream in Ubuntu

Setup a VM with the necessary tools

Most of the steps are done by the Vagrant bootstrap.sh script. The scripts automates what you find in the ubuntu documentation at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SimpleSbuild

After cloning the repository start the ubuntu VM with vagrant up.

Warning:

This ubuntu/xenial64 is broken ! At the first boot provision will fail.

Workaround 1:

Do a vagrant ssh and install the following: sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install virtualbox-guest-utils then get out and reboot with vagrant halt && vagrant up Hopefully this will be fixed soon upstream: https://bugs.launchpad.net/cloud-images/+bug/1565985

Workaround 2:

Install the vagrant-vbguest plugin that will take care of fixing the virtualbox vbguest

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

Login into the VM and prepare the build env

In this example we build packages for Ubuntu Xenial

At the first login prepare your env for xenial

sg sbuild
sbuild-update --keygen
mk-sbuild xenial

Download upstream sources

Now for example let's rebuild the cinder package

The official ubuntu documentation is here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OpenStack/CorePackages

debcheckout --git-track='*' cinder

You will now have a cinder folder that is a git repository. An upstream branch contains the software version from upstream, and the master branch contains the debian version. There are also stable branches like stable/mitaka and stable/newton In our use case we run openstack liberty so we will

git checkout stable/newton

Apply your own patch

New debian/ubuntu packages are built to hold the patches in a special folder:

cd cinder/
ls debian/patches/

Add your patch in debian/patches/ You can use the special folder /vagrant to copy the files from the host to the VM (see Vagrant docs for details)

Add the namefile of your patch to debian/patches/series

Add your changes to the git index

git add debian/patches/*

Do not commit yet, we first update the debian changelog

Update the debian changelog

Run this command to update the debian changelog

dch -i

Edit the changelog to look something like this:

cinder (2:7.0.2-0ubuntu2) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium

  * RBD: Delete snapshots if missing in the Ceph backend (LP: #1415905):
    - d/p/cinder-306610.patch: Apply patch from review 306610.

 -- Saverio Proto <saverio.proto@switch.ch> Mon, 29 Aug 2016 20:42:39 +0000

Now commit your changes into git, the debcommit tool will give to the git commit a description looking at the debian changelog

git add debian/changelog
debcommit

Build the package

First of all we need to use gbp buildpackage to create the dsc file.

gbp buildpackage -S -us -uc

You will find the .dsc file in the ../build-area folder

Special case of building Horizon

If you are building horizon, please check the special workaround to build horizon at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OpenStack/CorePackages because this package is a bit special). If you are building a new release to generate the horizon_<version>.orig-xstatic.tar.gz you can use the script ./debian/rules refresh-xstatic as described in the Readme file in the debian folder.

If you are rebuilding on top of a stable release, dont generate the xstatic file, you have to download it. This file is not in the pristine-tar branch. You will not have the .dsc file in the ../build-area folder but in the ../ folder. Also you will need to download the orig tarballs. Because you have two tarballs files you will have to use the debuild tool in the following way:

cd /home/ubuntu
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/horizon_10.0.3.orig.tar.gz
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/horizon_10.0.3.orig-xstatic.tar.gz
cd horizon
debuild -S -sa -us -uc
sbuild-newton -d xenial-amd64 -A ../horizon_10.0.3-0ubuntu2.dsc

To download the tarballs you have different options. If you have the deb-src in /etc/apt/source.list.d/<cloudarchive> you will be able to download the tarball using apt source horizon.

There also other pull commands available:

pull-lp-source horizon yakkety
pull-uca-source horizon newton

Start the build

Once you have your dsc file you can start the build

sbuild-newton -d xenial-amd64 -A ../build-area/<filename>.dsc

If the build is successful you will find the new deb packages in the parent folder

ls ../

Refresh a package after a new upstream release

In this example we see how we upgrade the package when the Nova team releases the nova version 14.0.5

debcheckout --git-track='*' nova
wget https://tarballs.openstack.org/nova/nova-14.0.5.tar.gz
cd nova
git checkout stable/newton
gbp import-orig --upstream-version=14.0.5 --debian-branch=stable/newton --merge --pristine-tar ../nova-14.0.5.tar.gz

You will have the upstream and tarballs branches

zioproto/ubuntu-cloud-archive-vagrant-vm