README

Use of devpkg
=============

devpkg <Command> <Options>

Commands:
-I <url>				# Install package from <url>
-L						# list installed packages
-S						# create /usr/local/.devpkg/db
-F <url>				# fetch package at <url>
-B <url>				# build package from <url>

Options: 
-c <config options>		#
-m <make options>		#
-i <install options>	# 
-p <prebuild script>	#
-d						# Not implemented

Examples:

devpkg -S											# initialize installed package file (/usr/local/.devpkg/db)
devpkg -I https://github.com/userid/reponame		# To install software from repo
devpkg -L											# Show installed packages
devpkg -F http://xxxxx/package.tar.gz				# Fetch package
devpkg -B http://yyyyy/package.tar.bz2				# Fecth and build package


About Devpkg (README version from Zed A. Shaw)
============

This is a small little project I'm tinkering on for my book
[Learn C The Hard Way](http://c.learncodethehardway.org) and I hope to 
accomplish a few things with it:

1. Teach how to use the bstring and APR libraries.
2. Create a simple install tool for people reading the book.
3. Change how packages are installed so that it's developer controlled.

Goals #1 and #2 are coming along and they should keep this project
simple and easy to understand.  Right now the code is just a quick
thing I whipped up to see if it'd work for the book.  It's definitely
not the ideal version students will see.

Goal #3 however is a more amibitious idea I have to create an alternative
install system that is controlled by the creators of software, not
the maintainers of operating systems.  To accomplish that goal
I'm going with a few design ideas:

1. It relies entirely on the proliferation of standardized build systems
   like autotools, make, gems, and eggs.
2. It relies on the proliferation of easy public hosting of source code
   repositories and .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 files.  Basically you point it
   at a git repo or source tar and it'll figure it out.
3. There is no central repository of packages outside the author's control.
   Everything about how to build the packge resides in the project official
   repository.
4. Dependencies are tracked by URLs so no chance of name collisions and
   weird naming schemes.
5. There is no facility to add "off grid" patches to work around build
   or portability issues, instead, fork the author's repo and give them
   the patch.  If they don't accept it, then have people install the
   fork.

The idea behind this is that there's been a shift in how software is
distributed such that you don't need to have some middleman package
manager "bless" packages for you.  Most programmers end up installing
from source using git, hg, or tar anyway.  With devpkg, you're just
automating and standardizing what programmers already do anyway.

Current Features
================

It's just one source file and a couple support files, but it mostly
works.  You can currently do this:

* Install anything that curl or git can download that has at least
  a Makefile.
* Keep track of the URLs you've installed.
* Install a DEPENDS file an author created which will install
  dependencies for you.
* List what you've installed already.
* Do a manual fetch then build so you can inspect the results.

None of this is very well implemented, but it currently works.  Notice
there's also no "uninstall" yet, since I still have to figure that
part out.


Getting Started
===============

First off, grab the source:

  git clone https://git.gitorious.org/devpkg/devpkg.git
  cd devpkg

Then install APR and APR-util from:

  http://apr.apache.org/download.cgi

Or look in the DEPENDS file for the URLs.

Install those, sorry devpkg can't help you there yet.

Once that's installed, run make:

  make && sudo make install

That'll make a binary in the local dir called devpkg.

Try building something, like a small fork of an SRP library
I created:

  devpkg -I git://github.com/zedshaw/srpmin.git

If that works, then list out what you've installed:

  devpkg -L

Try my depends file for devpkg:

  devpkg -I DEPENDS

That will reinstall them, and if apr-util complains it can't
find APR then use -c to add configure options:

  devpkg -I http://mirror.its.uidaho.edu/pub/apache//apr/apr-util-1.3.12.tar.gz -c --with-apr=/usr/local/apr

If that works, you can see that the installs are idempotent by doing:

  devpkg -I DEPENDS

Notice also that you can point it at a tar.gz or tar.bz2 on the network
or in a local file.  Try this to install zeromq:

# devpkg -I http://download.zeromq.org/zeromq-2.1.9.tar.gz
	devpkg -I http://download.zeromq.org/zeromq-4.0.3.tar.gz


Here's how you'd install Lua on an OSX system by using -m to pass
a different make target:

  devpkg -I http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz -m macosx

Change "-m macosx" to "linux" or whatever your platform is.

It probably can't install everything, but try as many things as you can
and tell me what needs to change to make it install stuff.

If you want to manually build a project then there's the -F (fetch) and
-B (build commands).  You could redo Lua like this:


  devpkg -F http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz
  devpkg -B http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz -m macosx

This will also force it to be installed even if it already is, so you
can rebuild and reinstall if you have to.

Future Ideas
============

For removing software, I'm thinking it'd be nice to have devpkg do an
rsync backup of key /usr/local directories, and use that to see what
a piece of software installed.  It would keep track of that and then
when you uninstall it'd just remove those files.  This would also
give you a backup of /usr/local so you could revert an install easily.

Probably going to switch to using Sqlite3 for the database, but I'm
going to use the ARP-util database drivers so that you could point 
this at a central database for storing installed/configured packages
for your machines.

I'll beef up the DEPENDS file so that it's more structured and allows
the author to indicate alternative make targets and configure options
for different platforms.  For example, the ability to map OSX machines
to the right make target for the Lua install.

I may try to make it work on Windows by sticking to APR and other
portable libraries.  Could be nice to have a standard source install
tool that worked on Windows too.


WARNING
=======

This is a super hack and it's probably not secure.  Don't go installing
random things off the internet without checking first.