OpenWRT Packages/Development

This documentation describes the current state of the package management development system. Idealised behaviours, plans and designs belong elsewhere: TODO make a page for them.

Anatomy of a Package

A normal opkg package

An opkg compatible package is an ar (ar != tar) archive containing the following files:

debian-binary

A 'magic' file containing only the string 2.0

control.tar.gz

A gzipped tar archive containing package metadata and install scripts. This contains the following files:

control

Package metadata

conffiles

A list of files which should be considered user-modifiable config files.

preinst, postinst, prerm, postrm (all optional)

Scripts to be executed as part of the (un)install process.

data.tar.gz

A gzipped tar archive containing the package payload.

A package in the SOWN SVN

In the SOWN package_build SVN each package its own directory in packages/. That package directory may contain the following files:

init.php

A declaration of the package metadata. Can also declare symlinks, files and config files.

files.txt and conf_files.txt (both optional)

A list of normal files and configuration files to be included in this package.

These file paths consider the data/ directory to be the root of the filesystem

preinst, postinst, prerm, postrm (all optional)

Scripts to be executed as part of the package (un)install process.

Checking out the SVN

Simply:

svn co svn+ssh://sown-auth/srv/subversion/package_build

Modifying a package

Editing Files

Edit them in the data/ directory.

Adding/Removing Files

Add/Remove files by adding their filenames to files.txt.

Symlinks

The package builder will try to do sensible things with symlinks listed in files.txt, but if it does not work, they can be added in init.php by php calls on the package object.

Building a package

Most of the time the Makefile will be sufficient for your needs:

make build-packages

However if you wish to build a package individually:

./build.php package_name

The -v option may be added for extra spam:

./build.php -v [package_name]

Version Numbering

The package builder attempts to uses the svn revision to ensure that package version numbers always increase. Please commit all changes before building packages for release.

Deploying a package

Currently the only means of deploying a package to a node is to copy it to the node's filesystem (e.g. scp) and install it manually:

opkg install [filename]

Resolving non-installed dependancies will fail if the node has not successfully run opkg update since it booted.

When working with a vm, there are useful commands for this in the Makefile.

Running a VM

The magical incantations are listed in the Makefile.

No special network configuration is needed for the userspace natting vm incantations to work, however with userspace natting ICMP is broken, so all server reachability checks will fail because they rely on Ping.

Currently non-userspace-natting is only configured on Leth's desktop.