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

Variables

abuild-defined 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.

User-defined variables

The following variables should be defined by user in APKBUILD:

arch: Package architecture(s) to build for. Can be one of: x86, x86_64, all, or noarch, where all means all architectures, and noarch means it's architecture-independent (ie, a pure-python package).

Tip: To determine if your APKBUILD can use noarch, build the package for your architecture and then run "scanelf -R pkg" from the directory that the APKBUILD resides in, in order to scan for ELF files in the ./pkg directory. If you do NOT get output from this, then noarch can be used.

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.
md5sums: Checksums for sources and patches. This is generated with abuild checksum and should be located last in the APKBUILD.
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. This package will "take over" files owned by packages listed in replaces. Useful when files moves from one (sub)package to another, or packages gets renamed.
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 archives 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.

Subpackages

Subpackages are specified in the $subpackages variable. abuild will parse this variable and try find a subpackage split function. The split function must move files from $pkgdir to $subpkgdir.

The split function can be specified in 3 different ways:

subpkgname:splitfunc
pkgname-splitfunc
splitfunc

Subpackages example

pkgname="foo"
subpackages="$pkgname-dev  $pkgname-doc py-$pkgname:pysub libfoo"

will create totally 5 packages:

foo (main)
foo-dev (sub)
foo-doc (sub)
py-foo (sub)
libfoo (sub)

The split functions for the 4 sub packages are:

dev() (provided by abuild)
doc() (provided by abuild)
pysub() (provided by user)
libfoo() (provided by user)

Examples

Simple package with separate -doc subpackage.

# Maintainer: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
pkgname=m4
pkgver=1.4.15
pkgrel=0
pkgdesc="GNU macro processor"
url="http://www.gnu.org/software/m4"
depends=
arch="all"
license="GPL"
subpackages="m4-doc"
source="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz
	gnulib-uclibc.patch"

_builddir="$srcdir"/$pkgname-$pkgver
prepare() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	patch -p1 -i "$srcdir"/gnulib-uclibc.patch
}

build() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	./configure --prefix=/usr
	make
}

package() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	make install DESTDIR="$pkgdir"
}

md5sums="5649a2e593b6c639deae9e72ede777dd  m4-1.4.15.tar.gz
20a7dedec0e9e0ee7107e33e798ffdbe  gnulib-uclibc.patch"

Example with -doc, -dev and python subpackages.

# Contributor: Carlo Landmeter <clandmeter at gmail>
# Maintainer: Carlo Landmeter <clandmeter at gmail>
pkgname=libxml2
pkgver=2.7.8
pkgrel=0
pkgdesc="XML parsing library, version 2"
url="http://www.xmlsoft.org/"
arch="all"
license="MIT"
depends=
depends_dev="zlib-dev python-dev"
makedepends="zlib-dev python-dev"
subpackages="$pkgname-doc $pkgname-dev py-$pkgname:py $pkgname-utils"
source="ftp://ftp.xmlsoft.org/${pkgname}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.gz
	largefile64.patch"

options="!strip"

_builddir="$srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver"
prepare() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	for _i in "$srcdir"/*.patch; do
		patch -p1 -i "$_i"
	done
}

build() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	./configure --prefix=/usr \
		--sysconfdir=/etc \
		--mandir=/usr/share/man \
		--infodir=/usr/share/info 
	make
}

package() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	make -j1 DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
	install -Dm644 COPYING "$pkgdir"/usr/share/licenses/$pkgname/COPYING
}

py() {
	cd "$_builddir"
	pkgdesc="$pkgname python bindings"
	install -d "$subpkgdir"/usr/lib
	mv "$pkgdir"/usr/lib/python* "$subpkgdir"/usr/lib/
}

utils() {
	pkgdesc="XML utilities"
	replaces="libxml2"
	mkdir -p "$subpkgdir"/usr
	mv "$pkgdir"/usr/bin "$subpkgdir"/usr/
}

md5sums="8127a65e8c3b08856093099b52599c86  libxml2-2.7.8.tar.gz
5ad4915665608ebfa5b89f7908467a72  largefile64.patch"