Prior to GCI 2014, I already have some experiences in packaging because my involvement in the MXE project. The way haikuports operates is very similar to MXE (which uses a makefile-based system), so it was not extremely hard for me get started in the packaging fun.
The 3 most important challenges or unexpected situations for me were:
- How to build a package with
haikuporter
(i.e.--no-dependencies
) - How secondary architectures work
- The use of chroot in
haikuporter
As of now, I am proud to say that I know the answer to all these questions,
mostly because of all the awesome people on #haiku
.
I have compiled a list of some possible improvements in the documentation of
haikuporter
, that will benefit new users of it:
- Make it clear(er) that all builds are done in a chroot, so only the packages declared in the recipe as dependencies will be available
- Update gentle intro to
haikuporter
to use SHA256 instead of MD5
On a coding side, it would be better if the following is possible:
- Directly drop the developer into the chroot if the
haikuporter
recipe failed. - Instead of manually building all packages including coreutils and gcc, use the existing copy on the system
First and foremost, read ALL of the gentle intro to haikuporter
. That
will answer absolutely most of the questions you are having.
Second, do not be afraid to ask questions on the IRC channel, and be patient.