Processes for building Porteus packages.

From Slackbuild

• Download the SlackBuild tarball (from slackbuilds.org, for example). It will contain a .SlackBuild script (which is basically a shell script that does the compiling for you) as well as whatever other files will be required by the package.
• Uncompress the tarball to a temporary directory.
• Use wget to download the source code archive referenced by the .info script (in the DOWNLOAD line).
• If necessary, edit the variables in the .SlackBuild script to bring it up up to date.
• Run the .SlackBuild script as the root user. This is important for the package creation process because it allows, among other things, file ownerships and permissions to be set properly.
• If the .SlackBuild worked, a Slackware package file will be found in /tmp. Use `ls -ltr /tmp` to find it.
• Convert the .tgz or .txz Slackware package into a Porteus module
  • tgz2xzm /path/to/slackware.tgz /path/to/porteus.xzm
  • txz2xzm /path/to/slackware.txz /path/to/porteus.xzm

Manually

Used for packages that do not have SlackBuild scripts associated with them or cnvertable packages.

If the software needs to be compiled or installed with a Makefile, installation script, or something similar it needs to be compiled normally but installed into a temporary directory (/tmp/module, ~/Desktop/fakeroot, or something like that) by using the DESTDIR variable or whatever the installation method supports. It is advised that extraneous symbols be stripped from any compiled binaries to save space.

In a similar vein, files that should be grouped together into a single Porteus module (such as control panel-related files, variable binaries (database files?), or custom configuration files) should be copied into a fakeroot directory structure that replicates the real file system as much as necessary, i.e., with its own /usr, /var, /lib directories, and so forth. In all cases, file ownerships and permissions must be set as they will be in the live system.

The dir2xzm utility is used to convert a fakeroot directory structure into a Porteus module which can then be enabled in the usual fashion:

 dir2xzm /tmp/fakeroot /tmp/custom_module.xzm

The general process for creating and manipulating the contents of modules is here.

Activating Porteus modules

• Move the .xzm file to your porteus/modules directory (in my VM the full path is /mnt/sda1/porteus/modules, but yours may vary).
• Run the command `activate /path/to/porteus/modules/newmodules.xzm` as the root user. If it worked you will see a window pop up (if you're using the desktop) confirming activation.
• Once activated, modules remain active across reboots (if Porteus is installed to read-write media).

Making Porteus modules available to Byzantium developers

• Copy it off of your virtual machine or USB key.
• Check it into the Subversion repository. Do NOT check Porteus packages into Git!