APKBUILD Reference

APKBUILDs are scripts to build alpine packages using the abuild tool.

Variables

The following variables are defined by abuild:

startdir: The directory where APKBUILD script is found.
srcdir: The directory here sources are downloaded to and unpacked.
pkgdir: This directory should hold the data files for main package. A normal autotools package has a make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install.
subpkgdir: This directory should have the data files for a subpackage. This variable should only be used from subpackage functions.

Note: All variables that holds a path (i.e $srcdir and $pkgdir) should always be within quotes in the APKBUILD (for example: "$srcdir"). This is so things don't break in case user has the APKBUILD in a directory with spaces.

The following variables should be defined by user in APKBUILD:

depends: Runtime dependencies that are not shared-object dependencies. Shared objects dependencies are autodetected and should not be specified here.
depends_dev: Runtime dependencies for -dev subpackage.
install: pre/post install/deinstall/remove scripts.
license: License(s) for the package.
makedepends: Build time dependencies.
options: build time options for package. Valid values are currently only !strip for avoid stripping the binaries.
pkgdesc: Short package description.
pkggroups: Groups to be created during buildtime. This group should be created in a $pkgname.pre-install script as well so group is created during runtime.
pkgname: The name of the package. All letters should be lowercase. Lua libraries/modules should be prefixed with lua- (for example lua-posix), perl modules with perl- (for example perl-xml-parser), php modules with php- and python modules with py--.
pkgusers: Users to be created during buildtime. Use $pkgname.pre-install for creating the user(s) during runtime.
pkgver: The package version.
replaces: package(s) that this package replaces. Useful when files moves from one package to another.
source: URL(s) to sources and patches.
subpackages: Subpackages built from this APKBUILD.
url: The homepage for the package. This is to help users find upstream developer, documentation etc.

Note: All other user specified variables, temp variables or APKBUILD specifics should be prefixed with a _ to avoid nameclashes with the abuild internals. For example: $_builddir.

Functions

The following functions should be specified in the APKBUILD. The functions should consider current work directory as undefined.

prepare(): Optional. Build preparation. Here should patches etc be applied. This is function is for convenience while working with the APKBUILD.
build(): Required. This is the compilation stage. This function will be called as normal user (unless the package() function is missing - for compatibility reasons). If no compilation is needed this function can contain a single return 0.
package(): Required. In this function the built application and files should be installed in "$pkgdir".

Note: Building in fakeroot will reduce performance for parallell builds dramatically. That is why we do the build() and package() separation.

The following functions are provided by abuild and is overrideable:

fetch(): download remote sources listed in $source to $SRCDEST and create symlinks to $srcdir.
unpack(): unpacks .tar.gz .tar.bz2 .tgz and .zip archices in $srcdir.
dev(): Subpackage function for -dev packages. By default this will only call default_dev which will move $pkgdir/usr/include, *.a, *.la and similar files to $subpkgdir.
doc(): Subpackage function for -doc packages. By default this will only call default_doc which will move $pkgdir/usr/share/doc, $pkgdir/usr/share/man and similar to $subpkgdir.