Makepkg/abs tutorial

Question

Some people on irc have been wondering about the proper way to compile their own Arch packages using the Arch Build System (ABS).  This is a quick tutorial describing the steps I took to get myself setup to do this.  I don't claim to be an ABS/makepkg guru, but hopefully there will be enough info here to get people started.
Background info
>>  ABS is a system for compiling Arch packages from source code
>>  After installing ABS, the ABS tree resides in /var/abs
>>  Within /var/abs are directories for each package available to Arch users via pacman
>>  Within each of these directories is a file called PKGBUILD which contains the directions for compiling the package from source, including version info and urls to source files.
>>  The primary tool for invoking PKGBUILD scripts is the makepkg utility
>>  Most PKGBUILDs will successfully compile a package when used as a normal user using fakeroot.  This is conducive to maintaining a safe and secure environment when executing PKGBUILD scripts.
Obtaining the ABS tree
The first step is to obtain the ABS tree which contains all the PKGBULDs for the packages we wish to build from source.  This is as simple as running abs as root:
[root@limbo root]# abs
Installing fakeroot
Again, fakeroot is used to provide protection against accidently overwriting/deleting/creating files or directories. 
[root@limbo root]# pacman -S fakeroot
Setting up a directory in which to build our packages
*  This section can be omitted if you choose to build packages in a dedicated directory in a normal users home directory.  I chose this method to maintain some structure and organization for my packages.
>>  This section is open to opinion and personal preference. 
>>  For a normal user to be able to run makepkg on a PKGBUILD, they must have write access to the directory the PKGBUILD is contained in.  To accomplish this and maintain security, we do the following:
>>  Create an abs group and make a normal user a member of that group.  In this example, I want the user john to be able to write to the directory we are going to create for local packages.
[root@limbo root]# groupadd abs
[root@limbo root]# usermod -G users,slocate,abs john
>>  Just a note, the user must log out and log back in for group changes to take effect.
>>  Now, we edit the directory /var/abs/local so that members of the abs group will have write permissions to it:
[root@limbo root]# chown root.abs /var/abs/local
[root@limbo root]# chmod 775 /var/abs/local
Building a package from source using ABS
As an example, let's suppose we want to build the terminal emulator aterm using ABS.  Here are the steps we would take (the whoami's are not necessary, but are just there to emphasize which user is doing which parts):
[john@limbo john]$ whoami
john
[john@limbo john]$ cd /var/abs/local/
[john@limbo local]$ find /var/abs/ -iname "*aterm*"
/var/abs/x11/aterm
[john@limbo local]$ mkdir aterm
[john@limbo local]$ cp /var/abs/x11/aterm/* aterm/
[john@limbo local]$ cd aterm/
[john@limbo aterm]$ ls
PKGBUILD linuxkeys.patch
[john@limbo aterm]$ makepkg -c
** makepkg invokes the PKGBUILD script and created an Arch package which is suffixed with pkg.tar.gz. The -c cleans up a number of directories created by makepkg during the build process. **
[john@limbo aterm]$ ls
PKGBUILD aterm-0.4.2.tar.gz linuxkeys.patch aterm-0.4.2-3.pkg.tar.gz
[john@limbo aterm]$ su
Password:
[root@limbo aterm]# whoami
root
[root@limbo aterm]# pacman -A aterm-0.4.2-3.pkg.tar.gz
loading package data... done.
checking for file conflicts... done.
upgrading aterm... done.
If you are upgrading a package you already have installed on your system, use "pacman -U pkgname-pkgver.pkg.tar.gz" as opposed to "pacman -A pkgname-pkgvery.pkg.tar.gz" as shown above.
Well, I hope that helps some people.  It's late, so I have likely missed something, so please post feedback if something is not working properly. 
Good luck!

Answer 1

Nice methodology for packaging.  I thought I would try it out myself and these are my updates.  Times have changed, life moves on, and this is what happens:
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm> makepkg -c
==> Making package: aterm 0.4.2-4 (Thu Jul 28 19:49:38 EDT 2005)
==> Checking Runtime Dependencies...
==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies...
==> Retrieving Sources...
==>     Downloading aterm-0.4.2.tar.bz2
--19:49:38--  http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourcefor … 4.2.tar.bz 2
           => `aterm-0.4.2.tar.bz2'
Resolving umn.dl.sourceforge.net... 128.101.240.209
Connecting to umn.dl.sourceforge.net|128.101.240.209|:80... failed: Connection r efused.
==> ERROR: Failed to download aterm-0.4.2.tar.bz2
==> Aborting...
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm>
Let's go to aterm-1.0.0.tar.bz2.  No appropriate emoticons to indicate the fear!!
New PKGBUILD:
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm> cat PKGBUILD
# $Id: PKGBUILD,v 1.8 2004/01/29 13:22:41 dale Exp $
# Maintainer: dale <[email protected]>
# Contributor: Tom Newsom <[email protected]>
# Modified by:
pkgname=aterm
pkgver=1.0.0
pkgrel=5
pkgdesc="An xterm replacement with transparency support"
depends=('xfree86')
url=http://aterm.sourceforge.net/
source=( http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sour … er.tar.bz2 )
md5sums=('ceb64c62ae243a7fc3ddb0d6f9a19faa')
build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-transparency=yes
    --enable-background-image --enable-fading --enable-menubar
    --enable-graphics
  make || return 1
  make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm>
Couldn't find the md5sums so I had to do them myself. 
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm> makepkg -c
==> Making package: aterm 1.0.0-5 (Thu Jul 28 20:51:27 EDT 2005)
==> Checking Runtime Dependencies...
==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies...
==> Retrieving Sources...
==>     Found aterm-1.0.0.tar.bz2 in build dir
==> Validating source files with MD5sums
    aterm-1.0.0.tar.bz2 ... Passed
==> Extracting Sources...
==>     tar --use-compress-program=bzip2 -xf aterm-1.0.0.tar.bz2
==> Starting build()...
configuring for aterm 1.00.00
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for AIX... no
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... (cached) none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for rm... /bin/rm
checking for mv... /bin/mv
checking for cp... /bin/cp
checking for mkdir... /bin/mkdir
checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
checking for find... /usr/bin/find
checking for xargs... /usr/bin/xargs
checking for ldconfig... /sbin/ldconfig
checking for sed... /bin/sed
checking for wait3 that fills in rusage... yes
checking for X... libraries /usr/X11R6/lib, headers /usr/X11R6/include
checking for gethostbyname... yes
checking for connect... yes
checking for remove... yes
checking for shmat... yes
checking for IceConnectionNumber in -lICE... yes
checking for XOpenDisplay in -lX11... yes
checking for XShapeCombineMask in -lXext... yes
checking if distributed as part of AfterStep... no
checking installed libAfterImage... afterimage-config not found - no AfterStep i ntegration available.
AfterStep integration
To enable background image support you will need to download and install
libAfterImage from ftp://ftp.afterstep.org/stable/libAfterImage/ and then re-run  this script.
whoops, I don't care
make[1]: Leaving directory `/var/abs/local/aterm/src/aterm-1.0.0/src/graphics'
==> Compressing man pages...
==> Stripping debugging symbols from libraries...
==> Stripping symbols from binaries...
==> Generating .PKGINFO file...
==> Generating .FILELIST file...
==> Compressing package...
==> Cleaning up...
==> Finished making: aterm  (Thu Jul 28 20:51:43 EDT 2005)
root@boogie:/var/abs/local/aterm>
For those watching closely, I had to remove the patch:
Previous attempt:
==> Starting build()...
patching file src/feature.h
Hunk #1 FAILED at 123.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file src/feature.h.rej
Questions:
1.  Why dowload each time?  URLs come and go and change.  Informational?  It is smart enough not to actually download after the first time.
2.  xfree86 is not on my system.  Why work?  xorg good, xfree bad.