Using binary packages

Binary packages in GoboLinux are precompiled software packages built for the GoboLinux directory tree and made available through the GoboLinux software repository (recipe store). Since these packages are already compiled, you can save the many hours needed to build larger applications. On the other hand, with binary packages you don’t have the ability to set compile flags for optimization or specific architectures.

Installing packages

InstallPackage is the GoboLinux script for installing binary packages. If you want InstallPackage to look for the most recent Gimp package available, you can run

InstallPackage Gimp

The script will check if the package is available in the GoboLinux repositories. (See /System/Settings/GetAvailable.conf for the specific URLs scanned. You may add your own repositories if you desire.)

If you want to select a specific version, you can pass it as the second parameter:

InstallPackage Gimp 2.8.18

If you downloaded the package and want to install it, run:

InstallPackage Gimp--2.8.18--i686.tar.bz2

The script normally runs interactively, asking about each dependency of the requested package before installing it. You can avoid these queries by adding the --batch or -b flag. This is particularly useful with large packages such as Gimp or Xorg, which have many dependencies.

InstallPackage -b Gimp

Dependencies

InstallPackage will warn you if dependencies of a package you are trying to install are unavailable and ask if you want to continue. This is valuable, because some software may still work satisfactorily even if a particular plug-in or other dependency is missing.

Installing packages from the LiveCD

See Installing Packages from the LiveCD.

Removing packages

See Removing programs

Creating packages

Structure

In GoboLinux, all binary packages (as well as all user-compiled software) is installed under /Programs in a “program directory” provided for each version of each application, for example:

/Programs/Gimp/2.8.18

When compiling software under GoboLinux the installation target directories such as bin/, lib/, and etc/ that are required for a typical program are placed inside the program directory.

With this self-contained directory structure, all that is needed to generate a binary package is to make a tarball of the program directory, copy over the Resources/ directory from the Compile recipe, and generate a few additional files, which are also placed under Resources/.

This is accomplished by the CreatePackage command.

Preparation

Before creating a package, be careful to vet the contents of the program’s Settings/ directory to ensure that it does not include personal information.

A package submitted for inclusion in the GoboLinux packages repository must have sensible default settings, honoring the application defaults if possible.

The CreatePackage command

In order to create a package, run the CreatePackage utility with the package name as a parameter. For example,

CreatePackage rxvt

will create a binary package in the current working directory.

Compiling from source

Introduction

With Compile, GoboLinux build utility, software sources can be downloaded, compiled and installed in a single step. An example will follow next.

In order to install irssi, a text-based IRC client from the command line, you would type the following instruction:

Compile irssi

Depending on the speed of your computer, internet connection and what packages you have installed, Irssi should download and install in a few minutes.

Compile manages the build process using GoboLinux recipes. Each recipe contains a list of build directives and supplemental control files for compiling a particular software library.

Finding recipes

Typically, you can just try the name of the recipe you want from the command line. There is also an online recipe viewer, listing the most recently uploaded recipes first.

Command-line options

Compile has a number of command-line options, which are listed here. The following are especially useful.

When using the --batch or -b automatically attempts to process all dependencies of the requested program.

Separating download and compile phases

The next two options are useful when working with intermittent internet access, or if you’d like to run your compiling jobs at night when you’re asleep.

Calling Compile with the --no-build flag downloads sources only.

Later, in the event that you wish to use the --no-web flag, this will direct Compile to search to your system’s own download cache and build the sources found there instead. This commandline switch is obviously very useful if you do not have a working internet connection for the time being.

Writing recipes

Main article: Writing recipes

Getting the latest Compile

• To use the development version of Compile, run

Compile Compile git

• To use the latest stable version, run

InstallPackage Compile

In general it is recommended to always use the latest stable version of Compile. Compile is very important to GoboLinux so if there is any problem in it, it is normally fixed very quickly.

Steps of the compile process

Normally, you shouldn’t need to compile “manually”, i.e., without using the Compile tool. However, it is possible to manually run the same commands that Compile uses.

Overview

Compiling programs in Linux is typically a three-part process: prepare the sources with ./configure, compile them with make, and install the compiled program with make install.

To this process, Gobo adds a source configuration step to target the GoboLinux directory structure, and after the install phase, a step that symlinks the files from the application directory under /Programs to /System/Index. It is this last step that makes programs “visible” to the GoboLinux system.

These are the relevant commands:

• PrepareProgram
• SandboxInstall
• SymlinkProgram

PrepareProgram is a wrapper to the first step described above. SandboxInstall is a wrapper to the third step, ensuring safe execution of make install. SymlinkProgram performs the final operations that integrate the new program into the system.

Setting up the sources: PrepareProgram

The PrepareProgram script does two things. It creates a directory hierarchy for the program under /Programs, and it attempts to prepare the sources for compilation.

The syntax for the PrepareProgram is:.

PrepareProgram <program-name> <version-number> [ -- <additional-options> ]

Passing a program name and version number is mandatory. These names are the ones used in the directories under programs. For example,

PrepareProgram --tree Foo 1.0

(the --tree switch) creates the directories /Programs/Foo/Settings, /Programs/Foo/1.0, /Programs/Foo/1.0/bin and so on.

The second task performed by PrepareProgram is to prepare the sources. Since there isn’t a standardized format for distribution of source-code tarballs in the free software world, there is no way to implement completely automated preparation. Fortunately, the popularization of the GNU AutoTools brings us much closer.

PrepareProgram, in this second step, will detect availability of preparation tools and perform one of the following:

1. If the program includes a configure script generated by GNU autoconf, PrepareProgram will run it, passing the necessary options (mainly --prefix, --sysconfdir) as well as any additional options requested by the user in the command line (as <additional-options>).
2. Some authors develop their own configure scripts, but due to the popularity of GNU autoconf, design a command line interface similar to that used by autoconf. PrepareProgram tries to detect if a non-autoconf configure script accepts at least the --prefix option, and uses it.

In short, PrepareProgram can be considered a wrapper to configure. Instead of running, for example,

cd foo-1.0
./configure --with-shared=yes

you’ll run

cd foo-1.0
PrepareProgram Foo 1.0 -- --with-shared=yes

SandboxInstall

Strictly speaking, if everything were configured correctly you could simply run make and make install, and all files would be installed under the appropriate subdirectory under Programs/.

To ensure this happens is to guarantee the modularity of the software installation.

To prevent any possibility of files being copied elsewhere in the directory tree than the target under /Programs, GoboLinux conducts the install step in a “sandbox” that is isolated from the rest of the filesystem.

SandboxInstall constructs a container for make install. It uses a sandbox provided by the FiboSandbox script, which configures custom permissions for an allowed set of paths to a special user, fibo. On systems with a UnionFS backend (such as FunionFS, UnionFS-FUSE or OverlayFS), the sandbox is provided by the alternative script UnionSandbox. Installation then runs confined to a sandbox, with no permission to write anywhere but the few places SandboxInstall allows it to, such as /Programs/Foo/Current and /Programs/Foo/Settings. Therefore, no files can be installed in “random places”. A typical call to SandboxInstall looks like this:

SandboxInstall Foo 1.0

If necessary, additional options can be passed. Refer to the SandboxInstall reference page for details.

Linking the sources: SymlinkProgram

The final step in the compilation of a program is performed by the SymlinkProgram. This is the script responsible for creating the symbolic links under /System/Index.

The syntax for SymlinkProgram is:

SymlinkProgram program-name [ version-number ]

The second argument is optional. If no version number is specified, the one linked as Current will be used. A commonly used command-line parameter is -c overwrite, which tells it to overwrite any existing symlinks in case of conflicts (the default action is to preserve the existing links in order to not affect previously existing applications). To integrate a program Foo into the /System structure, overwriting any links, you would type:

SymlinkProgram -c overwrite Foo

SymlinkProgram features many command-line switches, to cover more advanced needs. You can refer to the SymlinkProgram reference page for details if necessary.