SlackBuilder

SlackBuilder is a tool which aims to help to update Slackware packages. It checks for the latest version of an upstream package and can modify SlackBuild meta information accordingly.

Features

• Querying various sources (like registries) for the latest upstream version. Currently supported sources are:
  • GitHub
  • Packagist
  • Remote text file containing a version number (like the LATEST file).
• Updating package version and checksum in the .info file; Updating version variables in the .SlackBuild
• Updating packages with multiple sources. One source is assumed to be the main source and match the version of the package. Other sources are just updated to the latest version available for them.
• Modifying or just reuploading source tarballs to a different destination. SlackBuilder can download the original source tarball, optionally extract and modify its contents, and upload it to another server. It can be used for example to download package dependencies to ship them all within a single archive, so the package can be built offline.

Build instructions

SlackBuilder is a Haskell program and can be built and run using the Cabal build tool and package manager:

cabal build

After that you can run slackbuilder using Cabal and cabal run slackbuilder. Or you can install the program locally with cabal install and run it just as slackbuilder assuming ~/.cabal/bin is on your PATH.

Usage

Configuration

There is a sample configuration file under config/config.toml.example. The sample contains comments describing each supported option. Just copy this file to config/config.toml and modify as needed.

Each package that should be updated automatically needs a special description which contains links to the upstream repositories and instructions how the sources should be prepared.

Unfortunately the only format currently supported for the package descriptions is Haskell source code. But I'm planning to make it possible to describe the packages without recompiling the slackbuilder itself.

For the time being src/Main.hs contains descriptions of my slackbuilds, that can be used as an example and a start point.

Command line options

SlackBuilder is called with a command as its first argument:

slackbuilder COMMAND

Currently supported commands are listed below.

check

check checks whether there are updates available. It prints the name of each known package together with its version. If the package version is not the latest known version, the version the package can be updated to is printed as well.

up2date

Performs the package updates for packages the can be updated. up2date accepts an optional argument specifying the package that should be updated if only one package should be updated and not all.