Creating packages

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Related articles
Creating packages for other distributions
Patching packages
.SRCINFO
This article aims to assist users creating their own packages using the
ports
–like
Arch build system
, also for submission in
Arch User Repository
. It covers creation of a
PKGBUILD(5)
—a package build description file sourced by
makepkg
to create a binary package from source.
For instructions regarding existing rules and ways to improve package quality, see
Arch package guidelines
.
Overview
Packages in Arch Linux are built using the
makepkg
utility and the information stored in a
PKGBUILD
file. When
makepkg
runs, it searches for a
PKGBUILD
in the current directory and follows the instructions in it to acquire the required files and/or compile them to be packed within a package file
pkgname
.pkg.tar.zst
. The resulting package contains binary files and installation instructions ready to be installed by
pacman
.
An Arch package is no more than a
tar(1)
archive, or a
tarball
, compressed using
zstd(1)
, which contains the following files generated by
makepkg
:
The binary files to install.
.PKGINFO
— contains all the metadata needed by pacman to deal with packages, dependencies, etc.
.BUILDINFO
— contains information needed for
reproducible builds
, also see
BUILDINFO(5)
and
BUILDINFOv2(5)
.
.MTREE
— contains hashes and timestamps of the files, which are included in the local database so that pacman can verify the integrity of the package.
.INSTALL
— an optional file used to execute commands after the install/upgrade/remove stage (this file is present only if specified in the
PKGBUILD
).
.Changelog
— an optional file kept by the package maintainer documenting the changes of the package.
Preparation
Prerequisite software
First, ensure that the necessary tools are
installed
: the
meta package
base-devel
should be sufficient; it pulls in
make(1)
and additional tools needed for compiling from source.
The key tool for building packages is
makepkg
(provided by
pacman
). The tasks it performs can be found in
Arch package guidelines#Makepkg duties
.
Download and test the installation
Download the source tarball of the software you want to package, extract it, and follow the author's steps to install the program.  Make a note of all commands and/or steps needed to compile and install it. You will be repeating those same commands in the
PKGBUILD
file.
Most software authors stick to the 3-step build cycle:
$ ./configure
$ make
# make install
This is a good time to make sure the program is working correctly.
Set up clean chroot
It is recommended to follow
Building in a clean chroot
to ensure that packages and configuration of your system do not lead to mistakes in the
PKGBUILD
. This is a more robust and correct way to build packages and will often catch missing dependencies that you did not realize were needed because they already existed in your system.
Creating a PKGBUILD
When
makepkg
is run, it looks for a
PKGBUILD
file in the current working directory. If it finds one, it downloads the software's source code and compiles it according to the instructions specified in the
PKGBUILD
file. The instructions must be fully interpretable by the
Bash
shell.
After successful completion, the resulting binaries and metadata of the package, i.e. package version and dependencies, are packed in a
pkgname
.pkg.tar.zst
package file. The newly created package can be installed by simply using
makepkg --install
which will call pacman in the background, or by directly using
pacman -U
pkgname
.pkg.tar.zst
.
To start building a new package, first create a new directory for the package and change current directory into this one. Then, a
PKGBUILD
file needs to be created: a prototype
PKGBUILD
found in
/usr/share/pacman/
can be used or you can start from a
PKGBUILD
from another package. The latter may be a good choice if a similar package already exists.
PKGBUILD variables
Note
The main article is
PKGBUILD
, also see
PKGBUILD(5) § OPTIONS AND DIRECTIVES
.
makepkg
predefines the following variables that should be used by packagers to refer to temporary locations during the build process:
srcdir
This points to the directory where
makepkg
extracts or symlinks all files in the source array.
pkgdir
This points to the directory where
makepkg
bundles the installed package, which becomes the root directory of your built package.
They contain
absolute
paths, which means you do not have to worry about your working directory if you use these variables properly.
Note
makepkg
, and thus the
build()
and
package()
functions, are intended to be non-interactive. Interactive utilities or scripts called in those functions may break
makepkg
, particularly if it is invoked with build-logging enabled (
--log
). See
FS#13214
for details.
PKGBUILD functions
When building a package,
makepkg
will change into the source directory, before invoking the following five functions if they have been defined in the
PKGBUILD
. Function
package()
is required in every
PKGBUILD
and will always be invoked. If any of the other functions is not defined,
makepkg
will simply skip the invocation of that function.
During the build, the functions are invoked in the order in which they are listed here.
Also see
PKGBUILD(5) § PACKAGING FUNCTIONS
.
prepare()
With this function, commands that are used to prepare sources for building are run, such as
patching
. This function runs right after package extraction, before
pkgver()
and the build function. If extraction is skipped (
makepkg --noextract
), then
prepare()
is not run.
Note
From
PKGBUILD(5)
: The function is run in
bash -e
mode, meaning any command that exits with a non-zero status will cause the function to exit.
When it is not clear whether to put something in
prepare()
or
build()
, one rule of thumb is to put in
prepare()
the steps that should run exactly once after extracting the sources, and put in
build()
the steps which would make sense to re-run after any manual edits to the extracted files.
pkgver()
pkgver()
runs after the sources are fetched, extracted and
prepare()
executed. So you can update the pkgver variable during a makepkg stage.
This is particularly useful if you are
making git/svn/hg/etc. packages
, where the build process may remain the same, but the source could be updated every day, even every hour. The old way of doing this was to put the date into the pkgver field which, if the software was not updated, makepkg would still rebuild it thinking the version had changed. Some useful commands for this are
git describe
,
hg identify -ni
, etc. Please test these before submitting a
PKGBUILD
, as a failure in the
pkgver()
function can stop a build in its tracks.
Note
pkgver cannot contain spaces or hyphens (
-
). Using sed to correct this is common.
build()
Now, you need to implement the
build()
function in the
PKGBUILD
file. This function uses common shell commands in
Bash
syntax to automatically compile software and create a directory called
pkg
to install the software to.  This allows
makepkg
to package files without having to sift through your file system.
The first step in the
build()
function is to change into the directory created by uncompressing the source tarball.
makepkg
will change the current directory to
$srcdir
before executing the
build()
function. Therefore, in most cases, like suggested in
/usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto
, the first command will look like this:
cd "$pkgname-$pkgver"
Now, you need to list the same commands you used when you manually compiled the software. The
build()
function in essence automates everything you did by hand and compiles the software in the fakeroot build environment. If the software you are packaging uses a configure script, it is good practice to use
--prefix=/usr
when building packages for pacman. A lot of software installs files relative to the
/usr/local
directory, which should only be done if you are manually building from source. All Arch Linux packages should use the
/usr
directory. As seen in the
/usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto
file, the next two lines often look like this:
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
Note
If your software does not need to build anything, do not use the
build()
function. The
build()
function is not required, but the
package()
function is.
check()
Place for calls to
make check
and similar testing routines. It is highly recommended to have
check()
as it helps to make sure software has been built correctly and works fine with its dependencies.
Users who do not need it (and occasionally maintainers who can not fix a package for this to pass) can disable it by running
makepkg
with the
--nocheck
flag.
If you are testing a GUI application, you can
run it in a virtual xserver
.
package()
The final step is to put the compiled files in a directory where
makepkg
can retrieve them to create a package.  This by default is the
pkg
directory—a simple fakeroot environment. The
pkg
directory replicates the hierarchy of the root file system of the software's installation paths. If you have to manually place files under the root of your filesystem, you should install them in the
pkg
directory under the same directory structure.  For example, if you want to install a file to
/usr/bin
, it should instead be placed under
$pkgdir/usr/bin
. Very few install procedures require the user to copy dozens of files manually. Instead, for most software, calling
make install
will do so. The final line should look like the following in order to correctly install the software in the
pkg
directory:
make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
Note
It is sometimes the case where
DESTDIR
is not used in the
Makefile
; you may need to use
prefix
instead. If the package is built with
autoconf
/
automake
, use
DESTDIR
; this is what is
documented
in the manuals. If
DESTDIR
does not work, try building with
make prefix="$pkgdir/usr" install
. If that does not work, you will have to look further into the install commands that are executed by "
make <...> install
".
makepkg --repackage
runs only the
package()
function, so it creates a package without building. This may save time e.g. if you have changed just the
depends
variable of the package.
Note
Moving files (e.g. by using
mv
) produced by the
build()
function from
$srcdir
to
$pkgdir
breaks the
--repackage
option of
makepkg
.
Testing the PKGBUILD and package
As you are writing the
build()
function, you will want to test your changes frequently to ensure there are no bugs. You can do this using the
makepkg
command in the directory containing the
PKGBUILD
file. With a properly formatted
PKGBUILD
, makepkg will create a package; with a broken or unfinished
PKGBUILD
, it will raise an error.
If makepkg finishes successfully, it will place a file named
pkgname-pkgver
.pkg.tar.zst
in your working directory. This package can be installed with the
pacman -U
command. However, just because a package file was built does not imply that it is fully functional. It might conceivably contain only the directory and no files whatsoever if, for example, a prefix was specified improperly. You can use
pacman'
s query functions to display a list of files contained in the package with
pacman -Qlp
pkgname
, and the dependencies it requires with
pacman -Qip
pkgname
.
If the package looks sane, then you are done! However, if you plan on releasing the
PKGBUILD
file, it is imperative that you check and double-check the contents of the
depends
array.
Also ensure that the package binaries actually
run
flawlessly! It is annoying to release a package that contains all necessary files, but crashes because of some obscure configuration option that does not quite work well with the rest of the system. If you are only going to compile packages for your own system, though, you do not need to worry too much about this quality assurance step, as you are the only person suffering from mistakes, after all.
Checking package sanity
After testing package functionality, check it for errors using
namcap
:
$ namcap PKGBUILD
$ namcap
pkgname
.pkg.tar.zst
Namcap
will:
check
PKGBUILD
contents for common errors and package file hierarchy for unnecessary/misplaced files,
scan all
ELF
files in the package using
ldd(1)
, automatically reporting which packages with required shared libraries are missing from
depends
and which can be omitted as transitive dependencies,
heuristically search for missing and redundant dependencies,
and much more.
Get into the habit of checking your packages with
namcap
to avoid having to fix the simplest mistakes after package submission.
Using pkgctl to build in a clean chroot environment
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Arch build system#Build package
.
Notes:
This page is not about the build system. There is also
#Set up clean chroot
and
DeveloperWiki:Building in a clean chroot
. (Discuss in
Talk:Creating packages
)
You can use
pkgctl
from
devtools
to check if the package can be built where no other packages are already installed. While in the PKGBUILD directory:
$ pkgctl build
And check the output for potential errors or warnings. If the package depends on other AUR packages, those packages must be built and brought into chroot jail:
$ pkgctl build -I path/to/somepkg.tar.gz -I ...
Note
If the package is installed using an AUR helper, there is a good chance its tarball can be found in its cache directory.
Refer to
pkgctl-build(1)
for more options.
Submitting packages to the AUR
Please read
AUR submission guidelines
for a detailed description of the submission process.
Summary
Download the source tarball of the software to package.
Try compiling the package and installing it into an arbitrary directory.
Copy over the prototype
/usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto
and rename it to
PKGBUILD
in a temporary working directory.
Edit the
PKGBUILD
according to the needs of your package.
Run
makepkg
and check whether the package builds correctly.
If not, repeat the previous two steps.
Warnings
Before you can automate the package building process, you should have done it manually at least once unless you know
exactly
what you are doing
in advance
, in which case you would not be reading this in the first place. Unfortunately, although a good bunch of program authors stick to the 3-step build cycle of "
./configure
;
make
;
make install
", this is not always the case, and things can get real ugly if you have to apply patches to make everything work at all. Rule of thumb: If you cannot get the program to compile from the source tarball, and make it install itself to a defined, temporary subdirectory, you do not even need to try packaging it. There is not any magic pixie dust in
makepkg
that makes source problems go away.
In a few cases, the packages are not even available as source and you have to use something like
sh installer.run
to get it to work. You will have to do quite a bit of research (read READMEs, INSTALL instructions, man pages, perhaps ebuilds from Gentoo or other package installers, possibly even the MAKEFILEs or source code) to get it working. In some really bad cases, you have to edit the source files to get it to work at all. However,
makepkg
needs to be completely autonomous, with no user input. Therefore if you need to edit the makefiles, you may have to bundle a custom patch with the
PKGBUILD
and install it from inside the
prepare()
function, or you might have to issue some
sed
commands from inside the
prepare()
function.
Automation
Checksums
The process of updating checksums for new software releases can be automated by the
updpkgsums
tool; see
Makepkg#Generate new checksums
for details.
PKGBUILD generators
PKGBUILD
s for some packages can be generated automatically.
Note
Users are still responsible for ensuring that the package meets the high quality standards before submitting the generated files to the
AUR
.
Haskell
:
cblrepo
,
arch-hs
Node.js
:
nodejs-npm2arch
AUR
Perl
:
perl-cpanplus-dist-arch
AUR
Python
:
pipman-git
AUR
,
pip2arch-git
AUR
,
python-pypi2pkgbuild
AUR
Ruby
:
gem2arch
AUR
,
pacgem
AUR
Rust
:
cargo-pkgbuild
AUR
,
cargo-aur-bin
AUR
New upstream releases
pkgctl
(from the
devtools
package) supports
nvchecker
integration in the form of a
.nvchecker.toml
configuration file (which should be placed in the same directory as the
PKGBUILD
). See the pacman package's
.nvchecker.toml
configuration file for an example.
Tip
pkgctl version setup
will attempt to create the
.nvchecker.toml
configuration file automatically by analyzing the source array specified in the PKGBUILD.
You can then use
pkgctl version check
to check if a new upstream version has been released (compared to the one specified as
pkgver
in the
PKGBUILD
) and
pkgctl version upgrade
to update the
PKGBUILD
accordingly. See
pkgctl-version(1)
for more details.
See also
How to correctly create a patch file
.
Arch Linux Classroom IRC Logs of classes about creating PKGBUILDs
.
Fakeroot approach for package installation