Setting up the build environment on HDD

Install Alpine Linux in System Disk mode i.e traditional or classic harddisk installation to use as build environment. Configure the desktop so that the development system can also be used to daily drive, if required.

If the existing Alpine Linux installation is on a stable version, upgrade to edge to use as build environment.

Alternates are to setup a clean Alpine Linux build environment inside another system, using a chroot or some form of virtualization. The host system may also be Alpine Linux, or may be something else.

Upgrade to edge

An upgrade of Alpine Linux from a stable version to the rolling development version edge basically requires the same steps as Upgrading to latest release.

The crucial difference is, that when editing the /etc/apk/repositories file, all referenced repository versions (such as v3.21 or latest-stable) therein need to be pointing to edge as follows.

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

When using edge branch, testing repository can be added as shown above. Installing packages from testing repository with Edge branch and submitting bug reports is one of the best ways to contribute to Alpine Linux. Remember that, packages in testing repository have no support.

Warning: Do not enable stable release branch and edge repos at the same time. This can break your system. Either use edge or stable. If you mix stable and edge repositories, you're on your own.

After upgrading to edge, the currently installed edge version i.e the build date that is attached to the edge release may be checked with command:

$ cat /etc/alpine-release

Setup your system and account

The alpine-sdk is a metapackage that pulls in the most essential packages used to build new packages. Also install and configure a way to elevate privileges, such as sudo or doas, and an editor, such as vi, nano, micro.

# apk add alpine-sdk

This would be a good time to create a normal user account for you to work in. To make life easier later, it's a good idea to add this user to the wheel group; operations that require superuser privileges can now be done with sudo or doas.

The aports tree is in git so before we clone it, let's configure git.

Configure your global git config

Configure your name and email address in git. This name and email address will show up in all your commits:

$ git config --global user.name "Your Full Name" $ git config --global user.email "your@email.address"

Using git config without --global let you configure other details for a specific git repository.

Refer Development using git to grasp basics of Git operations.

Configure abuild

Abuild needs to be configured for both the system and user.

Edit the file /etc/abuild.conf as per requirements. Most of the defaults can be left alone, unless you are developing for a custom platform, in which case the comments in the file should guide you. The one field to edit is PACKAGER, so that you can get credit (or blame) for packages you create.

In order to use abuild command The user executing abuild must be a member of the abuild group:

# addgroup <yourusername> abuild

Note: Remember to logout and login again for the group change to have effect.

For abuild a public/private rsa key pair is needed. The abuild-keygen command from abuild package generates and configures the security keys.

$ abuild-keygen -a -i

Contribute

Proceed to create new package or create and submit patches for Alpine Linux.