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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="euc-jp"?>
<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN" "docbookx.dtd">
<!-- the original of this documentation is in pbuilder source tarball -->
<book>
<title>pbuilder User's manual</title>
<chapter>
<title>Introducing pbuilder</title>
<sect1>
<title>Aims of pbuilder</title>
<para>
<command>pbuilder</command> aims to be an
easy-to-setup system
for auto-building Debian packages inside a clean-room
environment, so that it is possible to verify that
a package can be built on most Debian installations.
</para>
<para>
Debian distribution consists of free software
accompanied with source.
The source code within Debian "main" section
must build within Debian "main",
with only the explicitly specified build-dependencies
installed.
</para>
<para>
The aim of pbuilder is very different from other
autobuilding systems in that its aim is not in trying to build
as many packages. It does not try to guess
what a package needs, and in most cases it tries the
worst choice of all if there was a choice to be made.
</para>
<para>
In this way, pbuilder tries to ensure that packages
tested against pbuilder will be able to build in
most Debian environments, hopefully resulting
in a good overall Debian source-buildability.
</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Using pbuilder</title>
<sect1>
<title>Creating base chroot image</title>
<para>
<command>pbuilder create</command>
will create base chroot image.
Distribution code-name needs to be specified with
<command><option>--distribution</option></command>
command-line option.
Usually, "sid" is the proper distribution.
</para>
<para>
<command>debootstrap</command> is used to create
the bare minimum Debian installation,
and then build-essential packages are installed on top
of the minimum installation using <command>apt-get</command>
inside the chroot.
</para>
<para>
For fuller documentation of command-line options, see
pbuilder.8 manual page
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Updating base chroot image</title>
<para><command>pbuilder update</command>
will update the chroot image.
It will extract the chroot, invoke <command>apt-get update</command>
and <command>apt-get dist-upgrade</command> inside the
chroot, and then recreate the base tarball.
</para>
<para>
It is possible to switch the distribution which the chroot
tarball is targetted at at this point.
Specify <command><option>--distribution <parameter>sid</parameter></option> <option>--override-config</option></command> to change the distribution
to sid.
<footnote>
<para>However, only upgrading is really supported.</para>
</footnote>
</para>
<para>
For fuller documentation of command-line options, see
pbuilder.8 manual page
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Building a package using chroot image</title>
<para>
To build a package inside the chroot, invoke
<command>pbuilder build <option>whatever.dsc</option></command>.
<command>pbuilder</command> will extract
chroot image to a temporal working directory,
and satisfy the build-dependency inside the chroot,
and build the package.
The built packages will be moved to a
directory specified with
<command><option>--buildresult</option></command>
command-line option.
</para>
<para>
<command><option>--basetgz</option></command> option can be
used to specify which chroot image to use.
</para>
<para>
<command>pbuilder</command> will extract a fresh chroot image
created with <command>pbuilder build</command>
and updated with <command>pbuilder update</command>,
and populate the chroot with build-dependency by parsing
debian/control and invoking <command>apt-get</command>.
</para>
<para>
For fuller documentation of command-line options, see
pbuilder.8 manual page
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Configuration Files</title>
<para>
It is possible to specify all settings by command-line
option. However, for convenience it is possible to
use a configuration file.
</para>
<para>
<filename>/etc/pbuilderrc</filename> and
<filename>${HOME}/.pbuilderrc</filename>
are read in when pbuilder is invoked.
The possible options are documented in
pbuilderrc.5 documentation.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Building packages as non-root</title>
<para>
<command>pbuilder</command> requires full root privilage
when it is satisfying the build-dependency but most packages do not
need root privilage, or even do not build when they are root.
<command>pbuilder </command> can create a user only used
inside <command>pbuilder </command> and use that user id when
building, and use <command>fakeroot</command> command
when root privilage is required.
</para>
<para>
BUILDUSERID needs should be set to a value for a user id that
does not exist on the system, so that it is harder for
packages that are being built with
<command>pbuilder</command> to do harm to the main system.
BUILDUSERNAME needs to be set to some value, and
pbuilder will use that user id and use fakeroot for building.
</para>
<para>
Using the fakerooting method, pbuilder will run with
root privilage when it is required, when installing
packages to the chroot.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Using pbuilder for backporting</title>
<para>
pbuilder can be used for backporting software from
the latest Debian distribution to
older stable distribution, by using a chroot that contains
image of older distribution, and building packages inside the
chroot.
There are several points to consider, and due to the following reasons,
automatic backporting is usually not possible, and
manual interaction is required:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Build-Dependency in stable may not be enough to build a package in unstable distribution, so package may need more than what exists in stable</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Stable distribution may have bugs that have been fixed in unstable that needs to be worked around.</para></listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Package in unstable distribution may have problem building even for unstable.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Mass-building packages</title>
<para>
pbuilder can be automated, because its operation is
noninteractive.
It is possible to run pbuilder through multiple packages
noninteractively.
There are several such scripts known to exist.
Junichi Uekawa has been running such script since 2001,
and has been filing bugs on packages that fail the
test of pbuilder. There were several problems with autobuilding:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Build-Dependency needs to install noninteractively, but
some packages cannot install without interaction (postgresql)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>When a library package breaks, or gcc/gcj/g++ breaks,
or even bison, a large number of build failure are reported.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Some people were quite hostile against build failure reports.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>
But most of these problems are now getting solved.
Only about 10% of Debian now fail to build from source (29 Dec 2002).
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Auto-backporting scripts</title>
<para>
There are some people who use pbuilder to automatically backport
a subset of packages to the stable distribution.
Any URL?
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Using pbuilder for automated testing of packages</title>
<para>
pbuilder can be used for automated testing of pacakges.
It has the feature of allowing hooks to be placed,
and these hooks can try to install packages inside
the chroot, or run them, or whatever else that
can be done. Some known tests and ideas:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Automatic install-remove-upgrade-remove-install-purge-upgrade-purge testsuite (distributed as an example)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Automatic lintian running (distributed as an example)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Automatic debian-test of the package?</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Enhanced and experimental features of pbuilder</title>
<para>
There are some advanced features, above that of the
basic feature of pbuilder, for some specific purposes.
</para>
<sect1>
<title>Using User-mode-linux</title>
<para>
<command>pbuilder-uml</command> exists.
Invoking that command instead of <command>pbuilder</command>
it is possible to use user-mode-linux.
The advantage of using user-mode-linux is that
it does not require root privilege to run,
and it does Copy-on-write, which is probably much faster than
conventional pbuilder method.
</para>
<para>
The problem is that this relies on User-mode-linux
which is a relatively new project, and has not quite
matured, as opposed to conventional pbuilder which rely
on <command>chroot</command> and <command>tar</command>
and <command>gzip</command>, which are known to work
on most Unix systems.
</para>
<para>
Currently there are problems with rootstrap that
stops <command>pbuilder-uml</command> from starting,
and help, or success reports would be appreciated.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Using LVM</title>
<para>
LVM has snapshot function that features Copy-on-write images.
That could be used for pbuilder just it can be used for
user-mode-linux pbuilder port.
It may prove to be faster, but it is not implemented yet,
and so no measurement has been made, yet.
</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter>
<title>Minor details</title>
<sect1>
<title>Documentation history </title>
<para>
This document is started on 28 Dec 2002 by
Junichi Uekawa, trying to document what is known
about pbuilder.
</para>
<para>
This documentation is available from pbuilder source tarball,
and from CVS repository of pbuilder (which might not be
public yet now).
A copy of this documentation can be found in
<ulink url="http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder-doc/pbuilder-doc.html">Netfort page for pbuilder</ulink>.
The homepage for pbuilder is
<ulink url="http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder.html">
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder.html
</ulink>
</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
</book>
|