has anyone every heard of a utility (perhaps slackware based) that converts .tar.gz source projects into .tgz packages for install?

i swear i seen a src2tgz utility the other day but google.com & lq.org comes up completely blank on it.

any how, i want a utility that will replace 'make install' with a 'installpkg' so that i can apply a 'removepkg' should i need to... it must be a trivial thing as i used to do that kind of thing before

is it the checkinstall package that does this ?

thanks

- perry

UPDATE: FOUND IT - SORRY FOR TAKING UP ANOTHER THREAD!

That is because it is called src2pkg

Eric

perry, the checkinstall program which used to be included in Slackware does what you describe, but this is only after you have unpackge configured and compiled the sources. The trackinstall program included with src2pkg does the same thing -sometimes better. src2pkg itself will do the whole process from unpacking the sources to the finished package and cleanup and allows you to control the build if needed and can produce a script for you which will ensure repeatability of the build. It does a lot of sanity checks on the package content and corrects most common mistakes or problems when needed.

Hi,

gnashley, the checkinstall package will require you to use the "--fstrans=no" command line flag when invoking 'checkinstall' so not to have a problem. I like 'checkinstall' and still use it. I've been meaning to try the 'src2pkg' sometime.

I guess the time is nearer than before. No progress at the 'checkinstall' site as of August 03, 2007. You can still get the package for Slackware 11 but you must use the flag as described when using for Slackware 12.


I just love Slackware and the LQ community! Keeps my mind active, those horses just can't understand me when I speak tech. I swear one of them tried to say 'Linuxxxx' the other day. Either too much time at the console or not enough with the horses. Or both?

The problem you refer to with the latest checkinstall is actually an installwatch problem. The 0.7.x version(s) introduce some sort of filesystem translation which is not working very well, yet.
src2pkg also uses installwatch so I keep an eye out for any updates/fixes for this problem. Fact is, I had installwatch-0.7 working with src2pkg, but in the course of testing I found a pretty serious bug which would cause installwatch to 'remove' your gcc and crt1.so libs. Yuck!
Since I had found the earlier installwatch-0.6 to be nice and stable I simply reverted to the earlier version. If you try this with checkinstall(using earlier version) you may have variable results -some people have reported no problems and others have had problems. The checkinstall script itself needs a couple of small fixes to work properly with later versions of bash and coreutils, although Slackware 12 still seems to not fully enforce the new POSIX standards. If you look in the changelog you'll see that at one point bash-3.2 was added and then later removed because it broke so many script-based programs -checkinstall was probably one of these un-named breakages.
I think you'll find src2pkg and the included trackinstall a better-performing and more flexible solution. And I stay on-the-ball with the program so that if there are problems you can be sure they'll get prompt attention.
I'm actually considering forking the installwatch libs -except for the file-tranlation code the recent changes have been from contributors and may provide some extra functionality with 2.6 kernels without the breakage from the fstrans code. The really obscure problem I found seems to be related to the linking of the binaries and libs -I found it by trying to compile and package libbonobo-2.14.x (or was it libbonoboui?).

Hi,

Sorry about the late reply. Thanks for the info. I guess it's time to change.

perry,

I use src2pkg; gnashley does excellent work:-)