Building ipkgs

Here's a short and incomplete guide to building packages for the Ipkg package management system:


1.

Create the directory structure and files as you want them appear on the installed system.
2.

Create a directory named CONTROL at the top-level of this directory structure.
3.

Inside CONTROL create a file named "control" with lines of the form "Field: value". Required fields are Package, Version, Architecture, Maintainer, Section, Priority and Description. Optional fields include Depends. The meaning of each of the fields will be given later in this document.
4.

If your package has any configuration files, then create a file CONTROL/conffiles which lists the absolute path of each configuration file, (as it will appear on the installed system), one per line. This will prevent the package management system from automatically overwriting configuration changes when the user upgrades the package.
5.

If needed your package may include some scripts that will be invoked by the package maintenance system. There are four possible times a script will be run: just before your package is installed, just after your package is installed, just before the package is removed, and just after the package is removed. These scripts are named preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm and should be located in the CONTROL directory. The scripts should return 0 on success, (a non-zero return value from preinst will prevent your package from being installed -- this can be useful in rare situations). The scripts can assume a tty is available so they may prompt the user. Note that the variable PKG_ROOT is set to the root of the package installation and can be used to refer to the packages contents in their installed locations.
6.

Now simply run:

ipkg-build directory [destination_directory]

where directory is the directory you have created. The destination_directory is optional and defaults to the current directory. The ipkg-build script peforms several sanity checks on the package directory and should guide you through any problems.

If you are not running ipkg-build as root, then provide the -g and -o options:

ipkg-build -o root -g root directory [destination_directory]