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blends-dev
If metapackages are builded using the tools inside the blends-dev
package it can be ensured that the resulting metapackages will work nicely with
the same version of blends-common package. The goal is to keep
necessary changes for the source of the metapackages of a Debian Pure Blend as
low as possible when the version of the blends source package
changes. Thus it is strongly recommended to use the tools described below.
The usage of the tools in the blends-dev package might introduce a
versioned dependency in the <blend>-config
package from which all other metapackages of the Blend in question
will depend. This <blend>-config package
instantiates the Blend in the common registry for all Blends in
/etc/blends.
The best idea to use the tools provided by the blends-dev is to
put a Makefile into the build directory containig one single line
include /usr/share/blends-dev/Makefile
(see /usr/share/doc/blends-dev/examples/Makefile). Using this
Makefile all tools that were contained in blends-dev
package versions before 0.4. These tools are moved to
/usr/share/blends-dev/ because there is no need to call them
directly. Here is a list of the make targets.
This target is the description file that is used in tasksel to
enable selecting the tasks belonging to the Blend. The file will be moved to
the blend-tasks. All information is obtained from the
single task files in the tasks directory of the Blend source.
The debian/control file of a Blend metapackage source archive is
auto generated out of dependencies that are specified in so called
tasks files. The rationale behind this is to enhance flexibility
about changes inside the Debian package pool where new packages might appear
and others might be renamed. The tasks just define which
dependencies the Blend maintainer group wants to be fulfilled and the script
blend-gen-control verifies whether these dependencies exist in the
specified package pool and create the debian/control file
according to the available packages. This does not only work for the Debian
package pool containing the distributions stable, testing and unstable. You
can even build your metapackages against a different package pool of a Debian
based distribution. This is for instance used to create the SkoleLinux
metapackages.
The syntax of the tasks files which serve as the central database
for the information in the debian/control file is defined by
RFC822. Some of the tags were mentioned formerly in Existing and prospective packages,
Section 8.1 to explain how the tasks files can be used to
create the web sentinel pages. Now the tags that influence the creation of the
debian/control file are given.
Will be turned to "Recommends" in the resulting
debian/control file. The rationale behind this is to enable
installing the metapackage even if a package belonging to this task is missing
for whatever reason. It also allows finally to remove the metapackage. This
makes even more sense since apt-get considers
"Recommends" as default installation targets.
The packages that are listed as "Recommends" in the tasks file should be installed on the machine where the metapackage is installed and which are needed to work on a specific task.
Use "Suggests" for packages of lesser importance that might be possibly useful, or non-free packages.
If a package is not available in the package pool of the target distribution
when creating the debian/control file inside the meta package
source archive any "Depends" or "Recommends" are turned
into "Suggests" to enable a flawless installation of the metapackage.
Packages that are specified with "Suggests" will not be taken over to
the tasksel control file (Blend-tasks.desk, see Blend-tasks.desk, Section A.1.1)
but only to the list of suggested packages of the according metapackage.
The "Ignore" key can be used as kind of "Soft-Suggests" to
put a package on the radar of the Blend. Packages that are tagged with Ignore
will not be taken over into the list of dependencies inside the
debian/control file of the resulting metapackage neither to the
Blend-tasks.desk control file for tasksel but will be
taken over onto the installation medium of a Blend in case there is some space
left. This key becomes especially important for specifying not yet packaged
software that might be packaged in the future (prospective packages). This is
explained in detail in the paragraph about the web sentinel (see Existing and prospective packages,
Section 8.1).
The "Avoids" key specifies existing packages that will be listed in
the the debian/control file as "Recommends" or
"Suggests" but, should not go to a installation medium (CD, DVD,
etc.) that might be produced by the Blend. A reason to avoid a package might
be that it belongs to the non-free section.
sources.list files in /etc/blends/
These files are used by blend-gen-control(1) to build valid
debian/control files that contain only available packages in their
dependencies. This enables building meta packages for stable,
testing, unstable or even a completely different
distribution that has valid sources.list entries. The file
/etc/blends/control.list is used as default for
blend-gen-control(1) and usually is a symbolic link (see
ln(1)) to sources.list.distribution. It
might be changed using the -sdist option of
blend-gen-control(1).
TODO: Either parse the available
/etc/apt/sources.list or use a sane debconf question
to use the "nearest" mirror.
/usr/share/blends/templates
The directory /usr/share/blends/templates contains templates that
can be used to build a <blend>-config, which uses
the tools that are contained in the blends-common package, and are
useful to manage <blend> user groups (see User roles, Section 6.3).
blends-common
This package creates a common registry for all Blends in
/etc/blends. Each Blend should put the files that are used into a
subdirectory named like the Blend of /etc/blends. The
blends-common package installs a common configuration file
/etc/blends/blends.conf, which can be used to influence the
behaviour of the tools described below.
blend-role - add/remove roles in registered Debian Pure Blend
blend-role add|del Blend [Role]
Add/remove (register/unregister) Role for the specified Blend. If Role is not specified, it's assumed to be named like Blend.
A registered Blend in /etc/blends, for example one of med, junior, edu or science
Andreas Tille tille@debian.org, Cosimo Alfarano
kalfa@debian.org.
blend-update-menus - add menu of metapackage to all Blend users
blend-update-menus [--blend Blend | --user
user]
blend-update-menus behaves differently depending on who run the command:
If it is called by a user, it adds, and keeps updated, menu entries for the user who runs it.
If it is called by root, it adds and keeps updated user's menu entries (see menu package for users' menus) for all users who belong to the group of the specified Blend, or only for a specified user, depending on which parameter is passed to the script.
one of the installed Blends, listed in /etc/blends/, for example (if installed: med, junior, edu or science.
system user
Andreas Tille tille@debian.org, Cosimo Alfarano
kalfa@debian.org.
blend-user - add/remove user to Role of a registered Blend
blend-user add|del Blend user
[Role]
Add/remove user to a Role of the specified Blend. If Role is not specified, it's assumed to be named like Blend
A registered Blend in /etc/blends, for example one of med, junior, edu or science.
user to add
the role in the Blend that user will assume
Andreas Tille tille@debian.org, Cosimo Alfarano
kalfa@debian.org.
blends.conf - configuration for Debian Pure Blends registry
This file is sourced from shell scripts inside the Debian Pure Blends package
blends-common and thus it has to follow shell syntax. The
variables that are set inside this configuration file can be overriden by
special Blend configration files
/etc/blends/<>Blend>/<>Blend>.conf
for each single Blend.
The following variables can be set:
Set the backend for the user role management system. Currently the only implemented role management system is unixgroups but others might be implemented later. Unsetting this variable leads to use no roles at all.
If this is set to yes, the user menus of meta packages can be created automatically at install time of the package if the postinst script of the package allows this. It is suggested to use this option in the specific configuration files of a special Debian Pure Blend that override the settings of the general configuration file.
Set the base directory for the user role management system. While this is more or less a feature for debugging this might be also used otherwise.
This variable can be set for debugging. Normally it should be left unset (NOT set to false or anything else!). If set to true a dry run of the tools is performed or echo DRYRUN: would print debugging information.
If set to 1 debugging mode is switched on.
blend-role (8), blend-update-menus (8),
blend-user (8)
Andreas Tille tille@debian.org, Cosimo Alfarano
kalfa@debian.org.
svn in process of moving to git)
Sometimes it might be interesting for developers to check out the latest code
of the Blend tools or a special Blend code for the meta packages. In Establishing and using communication
platforms, Section 9.1 the directory layout of the
svn-directory was described. How to derive the Debian packages
from this layout?
For the Blend tools and this documentation
git clone git+ssh://username@git.debian.org/git/blends/blends.git
or for the Debian Pure Blend BLEND-name
svn checkout svn+ssh://username@svn.debian.org/svn/blends/projects/BLEND-name/trunk
Note: This will be moved to Git (at least) soon after Wheezy release.
Change into the created directory and type
make -f debian/rules get-orig-source
This creates a tar.gz source archive of the packages you want to
build. For your personal comfort you can create a file Makefile
in your package source directory containing
#!/usr/bin/make -f
include /usr/share/blends-dev/Makefile
Which enables you to simply say
make dist
to create the source tarball.
Unpack the created source tarball and proceed like you build Debian packages normally.
The current Debian Med packages provide a working example how to use the tools described below.
In The web sentinel, Chapter 8 the creation of so called tasks pages Existing and prospective packages, Section 8.1 and bugs pages Bugs overview, Section 8.3 was described. These pages are automatically build by a cron job on Alioth from the current state of the tasks files in the SVN repository. If you have commited changes to the tasks pages and want to see the effect immediately the steps to do are as follows:
Login to alioth.debian.org
cd /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/webtools/
./tasks.py <blend-name>
To know what a valid <blend-name> might be have a look into /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/webtools/webconf. Each Blend has an according config file there. Leave out the .conf extension and you have a valid <blend-name>.
In case you are planing some more experimental changes there is another host
which was kindly sponsored by Frédéric Hébert for Debian
Med called blends.debian.net which is running a copy of UDD and
also hosts the latest development snapshot of the Blends web tools. Just ask
Andreas Tille tille@debian.org in case you like a
login on this host.
The code which builds web and tasks pages is available in Git at
git://git.debian.org/git/blends/website.git. It is using the
Genshi templating system
which enables influencing the layout of the pages by editing the templates in
the templates directory. You can also influence some parameters
of the web pages in the configuration files in the webconf
directory. Last but not least you can provide translations for the web pages
in the po directory.
Once something on the web pages was changed you can activate the changes as follows:
Login to alioth.debian.org or blends.debian.net
cd /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/webtools/
./deploy-dynamic-pages
Please note that the css and js files which are influencing the layout of the automatically created pages are in the same area as the static web pages (see below Editing static web pages of Blends on Alioth, Section A.5).
A very simple entry page is created for each Blend which is linked from the
list of all Blends.
Most probably the maintainers of a Blend want to enhance this page a bit. It
is actually intended that this simple template will be enhanced as it is done
for instance for the Debian
Med project which has a quite complex PHP driven web with a lot of
other features than just linking to the tasks and bugs pages. Maintainers of a
Blend should care for this index page which currently is just featuring links
to the automatically updated pages as well as an image which shows the activity
of the relevant
mailing list. Maintaining these static pages is not a
"service" which is done for you. The maintainers of a Blend should
care for this!
The static pages are maintained in Git at
git://git.debian.org/git/blends/website.git in the
websites directory. Once you have changed the content of the
pages you can activate the changes by doing:
Login to alioth.debian.org or blends.debian.net
cd /var/lib/gforge/chroot/home/groups/blends/webtools/
git pull
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Debian Pure Blends
15 December 2012tille@debian.org