User’s Manual

The user’s manual covers using a mini-buildd installation – i.e., everything you can do with it given someone else had already set it up for you as a service.

Introduction

The core functionalities of mini-buildd are, 1st the arch-multiplexed clean building, and 2nd providing a repository. You don’t need to worry about 1st, mini-buildd just does it for you.

The 2nd however, the repository, goes public and hits “global Debian namespace”; so, as a big picture, it’s important first to understand how mini-buildd’s (default) setup tries to deal with this.

First of all, each instance has it’s own identity string, which will be used in the name of the keyring package, and will also appear in the apt repository in the Origin field.

Second, each instance instance may have N repositories, which each have their own identity string, determining the actual distribution names (CODENAME-ID-SUITE) to be used for uploads or in apt lines.

Both identities should be “globally unique” to avoid any confusion or conflicts with other existing repositories.

Note

Exceptions are the generic Sandbox and Developer repositories, with the de-facto standard names test and debdev; these should never be used publicly or for anything but testing.

Third, when people are mixing repositories together, we want to avoid package clashes, like same PACKAGE-VERSION from two different repositories. Also, we want guaranteed upgradeability between two different base distributions, and from experimental to non-experimental suites. Hence, at least in the Default Layout, we also have a version restriction, which resembles that of Debian Backports:

The Default Layout’s Suites and Semantics Overview
Suite Flags Version restriction Example(test/jessie) Repository Semantic Consumer
experimental U E 6R ~<R><C>+0 ~test80+0 No auto Use at will Developer.
snapshot U E 12R ~<R><C>+0 ~test80+0 No auto, but upgrades Continuous integration Developer, beta tester.
unstable U M 9R ~<R><C>+[1-9] ~test80+3 No auto, but upgrades Proposed for live Developer, beta tester.
testing M 3R ~<R><C>+[1-9] ~test80+2 No auto, but upgrades QA testing Quality Assurance.
stable 6R ~<R><C>+[1-9] ~test80+1 No auto, but upgrades Live End customer.

U: Uploadable M: Migrates E: Experimental NR: keeps N Rollback versions <R>: Repository Identity <C>: Codename version.

User Setup

As a minimal setup, you should have a web browser installed; you can instantly browse mini-buildd, and use all functionality that do not require extra permissions.

To be able use advanced functionality (for example, create package subscriptions, access restricted API calls, or upload your GnuPG public key), create a user account:

  1. Register a user account.
  2. Setup your profile (package subscriptions, GnuPG key upload).

To access mini-buildd from the command line via mini-buildd-tool, install python-mini-buildd:

# apt-get install python-mini-buildd

To upload packages, install dput and add mini-buildd’s dput config to your ~/.dput.cf:

# apt-get install dput
? mini-buildd-tool HOST getdputconf >>~/.dput.cf

Note

After ~/.dput.cf has been set up this way, you can use [USER@]ID-like shortcuts instead of HOST, and these will also appear in the bash auto-completion of mini-buildd-tool.

Using the repository

Upload a package

Changelog Magic Lines (per-upload control)

mini-buildd currently supports these so called magic lines as changelog entry to control it on a per-upload basis:

MINI_BUILDD: BACKPORT_MODE
  Make QA-Checks that usually break when backporting unlethal (like lintian).

MINI_BUILDD: AUTO_BACKPORTS: CODENAME-REPOID-SUITE[,CODENAME-REPOID-SUITE...]
  After successful build for the upload distribution, create and upload automatic internal ports for the given distributions.

FAQ

Todo

BUG: reprepro fails with debian/ as symlink in Debian native packages

Please follow [4] for this subject.

In such a case, builds will be fine, but reprepro will not be able to install the package; you will only be able to see reprepro’s error “No section and no priority for” in the daemon.log.

For the moment, just avoid such a setup (which is imho not desireable anyway). However, as it’s a legal setup afaik it should work after all.

Using the API

Automatic ports

Internal ports

External ports

Repository maintenance

Todo

IDEA: Dependency check on package migration.

Todo

IDEA: Custom hooks (prebuild.d source.changes, preinstall.d/arch.changes, postinstall.d/arch.changes).

FAQ

Todo

FAQ: aptitude GUI does not show distribution or origin of packages

To show the distribution of packages, just add %t to the package display format [1]. For example, I do prefer this setting for the Package-Display-Format:

aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format "%c%a%M%S %p %t %i %Z %v# %V#";

The origin cannot be shown in the package display format [2]. However, you may change the grouping to categorize with “origin”. For example, I do prefer this setting for the Default-Grouping:

aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping "task,status,pattern(~S~i~O, ?true ||),pattern(~S~i~A, ?true ||),section(subdirs,passthrough),section(topdir)";

This will group installed packages into an Origin->Archive hierarchy.

Additionally to aptitude’s default “Obsolete and locally installed” top level category (which only shows packages not in any apt archive), this grouping also more conveniently shows installed package _versions_ which are not currently in any repository (check “Installed Packages/now”).

Todo

BUG: apt secure problems after initial (unauthorized) install of the archive-key package

  • aptitude always shows <NULL> archive

You can verify this problem via:

# aptitude -v show YOURID-archive-keyring | grep ^Archive
Archive: <NULL>, now
  • BADSIG when verifying the archive keyring package’s signature

Both might be variants of [3] (known to occur for <= squeeze). For both, check if this:

# rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# apt-get update

fixes it.

Todo

FAQ: Multiple versions of packages in one distribution

This is not really a problem, but a uncommon situation that may lead to confusion.

Generally, reprepro does allow exactly only one version of a package in a distribution; the only exception is when installed in different components (e.g., main vs. non-free).

This usually happens when the ‘Section’ changes in the corresponding ‘debian/control’ file of the source package, or if packages were installed manually using “-C” with reprepro.

Check with the “show” command if this is the case, i.e., s.th. like:

$ mini-buildd-tool show my-package

you may see multiple entries for one distribution with different components.

mini-buildd handles this gracefully; the remove, migrate and port API calls all include an optional ‘version’ parameter to be able to select a specific version.

In the automated rollback handling, all versions of a source package are shifted.