Project info for autopkg.pl

Created 4 May 2004 at 16:45 UTC by psypete.

Freshmeat page: http://freshmeat.net/projects/autopkg_pl/

Notes:

autopkg.pl is a dirty hack in perl designed to automatically build and package source code into Slackware packages based on configuration defaults and 'hint files'. autopkg.pl's main goal is to make packaging stuff easier/quicker. It is _not_ meant to be a package manager or fetch-build-install program like portage, apt-get or swaret. autopkg.pl has some nifty features, such as: * Build a package as a normal user instead of root, and depending on the global config file, install a package as a normal user if it built properly. * Automatically determine how to build a package from source without needing to be given any special instructions. Most package management tools that build packages from source, autopkg.pl can make accurate guesses as to the steps to take to build the software. it isn't perfect though; if an evil developer packaged their source in a way that it just can't be built without some user intervention, a hint file can be used to help autopkg.pl do its job (kinda like an ebuild file). * Build the packages in one place, move the finished package somewhere else. * It's written in Perl! This isn't the end-all be-all of packaging programs, but I like it. Basically if you just want a program that will follow the usual steps you would take in hand-building a package, you may like autopkg.pl. Once you've written a few hint files it becomes very useful. autopkg.pl can already build some complicated packages such as Evolution, the Gnome desktop environment, even Linux kernels! It can also use more than one build system; already both automake/autoconf and python's distutils are supported (as well as building Perl modules). It is best used to build simple packages like Gaim, MPlayer, xmms, etc. as usually they require little to no set-up to build properly. Each release adds more hint files, and users are encouraged to contribute their own hint files.

License: GNU General Public License

This project has the following developers:

• psypete is a Lead Developer.

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

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If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!