Ubuntu – How to use a Launchpad recipe for patching and building an original package

bazaarlaunchpadpackagingrecipe

I have a patch against vim which applies to packaged version. I would like to automate this, so that when new ubuntu is released, the newer unpatched vim gets patched & built using a recipe. I read documentation on recipes, though I am not sure how to apply a patch.

Should I create branch with modified source and have the recipe merge it? How does that handle when patched branch gets out-of-date with the distro package in newer release? (The patch will very likely still apply; but will the branches be able to merge as well?)

Best Answer

Yes, you should indeed create a new branch derived from the vim Bazaar branch on Launchpad (lp:ubuntu/vim), and commit your patch to that branch.

As long as there are no conflicts when merging, the recipe will merge the two branches when one of them changes, and rebuild. This means that if there is a new revision in the ubuntu branch, it will happily rebuild.

The recipe would look something like this:

# bzr-builder format 0.3 deb-version {debupstream}+myfix{revno:myfix}
lp:ubuntu/oneiric/vim
merge myfix lp:~YOURNAME/ubuntu/oneiric/vim/myfix

The guide for this is here

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Ubuntu – How to use one recipe to create packages for different ubuntu series (trouble with ./debian/changelog)

In this context, the distribution field is irrelevant. Look in the official Ubuntu archives. Of course, you'll see that the top changelog entry will have "unstable" as the distribution for many packages. Likewise, all uploads that make it into the updates repository are actually copied over from the proposed repository. So a package in maverick-updates will actually say maverick-proposed in the changelog.

The importance of the distribution field depends on the tools that make use of it. For instance, if you use dput to upload to your PPA with: ~<your_launchpad_id>/<ppa_name>/ubuntu/ the distribution field in the changelog determines for which release the package will be built. But even this can be over-ridden by uploading directly to release you want with:

~<lp_name>/ppa/ubuntu/<ubuntu_release>

Launchpad's build from branch service uses the ability to copy a package from one PPA series to another. It doesn't actually care what is in the changelog for this. So the way you are currently doing things is correct.

Ubuntu – Tell Launchpad what DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS to use when building PPA package

The PPAs do not have a way to specify an environment variables (including DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS) unfortunately. Until they do, you will need to edit the debian/rules file and set it manually yourself near the top (but not the first line if it uses a "#!"):

DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodocs

Optionally, just find the section of the rules file that looks for "nodocs" and change it to do what you need it to do.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – How to use one recipe to create packages for different ubuntu series (trouble with ./debian/changelog)

Ubuntu – Tell Launchpad what DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS to use when building PPA package

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