vABS: Versioned Arch Build System & vpack helper

estevao · 2011-07-28 18:12:19

What is it?
vABS is an addition to ABS that has as main goal to keep different versions of the official PKGBUILDs. In ABS you have the latest versions of PKGBUILDs, while in vABS you also have old versions.

What is it used for?
vABS is very useful to downgrade packages. Sometimes it happens that a new package brings some bug and you want to return to the previous version until the bug is solved, but for that you need to have the old package in the local pacman cache or in the repositories, but its cache may have been deleted and the package may have come out of the archives. An alternative would be to edit the latest PKGBUILD available in ABS, which can be tricky because some files may not work with older versions, such as patches, etc. Another way would be to download the files via SVN, which is not so practical, although it works very well.

How to use it?
Its use is very simple. Access vabs.archlinux-br.org, choose your architecture, navigate to the directory that contains the desired version of your package and download the tgz file, which contains all the files you need to compile the package. Then just unpack the tarball and compile the package with makepkg, then install with pacman -U package.tar.xz.

You can also use vpack, which is a vABS helper that makes the package building an even simpler process.
vpack is available on AUR: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51856

PS: Git support was dropped due to space issues on GitHub. You should use vpack instead.

Contact
vabsΘarchlinux-br·org.

Hope you like it, thanks.

Last edited by estevao (2011-09-08 05:43:58)

hauzer · 2011-07-28 18:20:06

This will prove useful indeed. Thanks!

karol · 2011-07-28 18:24:38

1. How many versions are available atm? I see only the current ones.
2. How can I automatically grab a number of files? Just curl / wget etc.? No git access?

estevao · 2011-07-28 18:31:45

@karol: vABS currently has only some old versions, because it began to store data on July 22. But it can be useful for us tomorrow. There is still no support for git, but is a good idea and simple to implement, may have something in the near future. Thanks.

Last edited by estevao (2011-07-28 22:36:29)

Awebb · 2011-07-28 21:48:58

Ah, as I thought then. You just started grabbing packages. I think this is a good idea. Whenever I really have to downgrade a package, I really don't have time to figure out a PKGBUILD for that specific version I need. As much as I love tinkering though.

karol · 2011-07-28 22:00:22

Awebb wrote:

Ah, as I thought then. You just started grabbing packages. I think this is a good idea. Whenever I really have to downgrade a package, I really don't have time to figure out a PKGBUILD for that specific version I need. As much as I love tinkering though.

Why not use ARM - you can easily (apart from config file changes) go back e.g. two weeks and install packages that were current back then.
Are you altering the standard PKGBUILDs in some way?

estevao · 2011-07-28 22:10:35

@karol: I like the vABS idea because you also have the liberty of compiling the package with custom flags (if needed). Anyway, it is just another rollback alternative.

Last edited by estevao (2011-07-28 22:15:13)

Ramses de Norre · 2011-07-28 22:19:09

Nice, although the PKGBUILDs will only work as long as the external sources remain available (at the same url). I'll bookmark it though

estevao · 2011-07-28 22:25:36

@Ramses de Norre: you are right, but I believe that this kind of problem will occur in most cases with older PKGBUILDs, so I think that the impact will be very small... let's see

ngoonee · 2011-07-29 01:51:28

Yes, and its relatively trivial to change the URLs, whereas if the recent changes to the PKGBUILD were more than just version-bumps, you'd normally have to go through svn to get the history. Pretty good idea, but it is kinda redundant due to the svn history (not sure about the svntogit, haven't used that much).

karol · 2011-07-29 01:59:43

ngoonee wrote:

it is kinda redundant due to the svn history (not sure about the svntogit, haven't used that much).

vABS provides convenient tgz archives.

estevao · 2011-07-29 02:09:40

@karol: and very soon git support

EDIT: Added git support!

Since our hosting provider does not provide git-daemon, I'm using GitHub to speed things up. I think it's nice!

vabs_i686: git clone git://github.com/archlinuxbr/vabs_i686.git

vabs_x86_64: git clone git://github.com/archlinuxbr/vabs_x86_64.git

And to update (from inside the repo): git pull origin master

Last edited by estevao (2011-07-29 17:44:00)

karol · 2011-08-09 14:12:02

How can I get kernel26-headers?
http://vabs.archlinux-br.org/i686/core/K/

estevao · 2011-08-09 14:22:06

@karol: you can get it from http://vabs.archlinux-br.org/i686/core/ … 39.3-1.tgz

This PKGBUILD generates three packages: 'kernel26' 'kernel26-headers' 'kernel26-docs'

karol · 2011-08-09 15:30:29

estevao wrote:

@karol: you can get it from http://vabs.archlinux-br.org/i686/core/ … 39.3-1.tgz
This PKGBUILD generates three packages: 'kernel26' 'kernel26-headers' 'kernel26-docs'

Thanks a lot!

estevao · 2011-08-26 00:23:25

Hey guys, take a look at vpack - vABS Packaging Utility: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=51856

Opinions and suggestions are welcome!

Thanks.

Last edited by estevao (2011-08-26 03:27:14)

GSF1200S · 2011-08-26 05:01:34

This might be a much more viable alternative to the ARM. I personally think the ARM is very convenient and really hope it stays around, but it is also much more bandwidth/server intensive.

I really like vpack. Ill have to look into it more; one of the best things about ABS for me is diff patching, so once I figure out the build directories and all that, vpack will be real handy.

Please dont let this die! Thanks for the idea/work

Heres an idea: have an option in a config file somewhere that specifies what file manager one uses. Then, have an option (after downloading the source) in the list that allows one to open the build directory in the file manager they chose in the config file (or even what is in PATH). This would be really handy for applying diff patches. For example, see: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 60#p981760

vpack could make my post 28 largely obsolete. I would use vpack for ABS in general actually. Anyways, nice tool

**EDIT** Says it plain as day where the build directory is. Anyways, might be nice to have a file manager launch option for throwing in diff patches as I said.

Last edited by GSF1200S (2011-08-26 05:11:11)

estevao · 2011-08-28 23:14:49

@GSF1200S: Glad you enjoy it. I'll analyse your suggestion and give you some feedback soon. Thanks!

GSF1200S · 2011-08-29 03:33:02

estevao wrote:

@GSF1200S: Glad you enjoy it. I'll analyse your suggestion and give you some feedback soon. Thanks!

Cool- just an idea of convenience and certainly not one of necessity. vABS is very good in the event some update breaks X- instead of using Links to navigate to the arm for a package, you can just use vpack to build that package right on the spot from the console; I like everything about vpack actually. Ill use it for access to ABS even when im not going down in version.

The file manager suggestion can be worked around, obviously, by just opening a file manager and navigating to the build directory and adding patches, etc. I had the idea simply because you allow editing of the PKGBUILD directly from vpack, so a file manager option would make it easy to add the patch files to a directory where the PKGBUILD is located (build directory).

Again, this certainly isnt a bug and I understand the concept of not bloating things, so thats entirely your choice. Im using vABS regardless

Thanks again

estevao · 2011-09-08 05:02:02

@GSF1200S: I don't understand the real necessity of opening a file manager in the build directory. Could you give me a practical example? Thanks.

Last edited by estevao (2011-09-08 05:06:00)

fsckd · 2011-09-08 05:13:53

Useful project! Some questions,

Any chances of including source material with the archives?
Planning on pulling stuff from SVN and filling in your missing history?

GSF1200S wrote:

using Links to navigate to the arm for a package

You can use pacman with ARM.

estevao · 2011-09-08 14:49:08

@fsckd:

1 - Yes, maybe in the near future... I'm already doing some tests
2 - No, because _very_ old pkgbuilds aren't very usefull, so I think that pulling things from SVN will not worth the trouble.

Last edited by estevao (2011-09-08 14:50:17)

GSF1200S · 2011-09-11 22:17:28

fsckd wrote:

Useful project! Some questions,
Any chances of including source material with the archives?
Planning on pulling stuff from SVN and filling in your missing history?
GSF1200S wrote:
using Links to navigate to the arm for a package
You can use pacman with ARM.

Yeah, I guess I had been doing it the hard way. You can put the ARM server in there and just change the date back, or you can use the Downgrade script from the AUR which allows you to downgrade to multiple different versions of a package (using ARM and local cache)- Im sure you already know this, but I didnt vABS is awesome because you can use diff patches to fix things (especially useful with the kernel).

Estevao: its not a huge deal, and if its going to be at all difficult to implement or any more than a few lines of code, forget it. I only suggested this to make diff patching easier and to have greater access to the source and PKGBUILD (which is already editable by vpack). However, this was also before I realized it listed the build directory plain as day- its just a matter of opening a file manager, then clicking a few folders until youre at the build directory. An example is the recent problem I had with my webcam- it required linux to be built with a patch run against it to disable USB autosuspend for my webcam (else id sound like a chipmunk). I was thinking of vpack launching a file manager for the sake of making the patching process easier- since from that file manager I can launch terminals to check md5sums of the source and patch file, run makepkg -s directly from the terminal, etc.

Really, thinking more about it, I disagree with my earlier self- I dont think one downgrades enough to warrant complicating vpacks code. vpack is good enough

Last edited by GSF1200S (2011-09-11 22:18:54)

fsckd · 2011-09-12 01:47:09

GSF1200S might be onto something. When I used to use ABS, I thought of creating a recipe system to apply patches to the PKGBUILD directory and may be drop in some files before running makepkg. His approach seems to be a manual version of what I was thinking. (Unless I have misunderstood.)

karol · 2012-01-12 08:31:54

I get a 403 from http://vabs.archlinux-br.org/ - what happened?
I think http://forum.archlinux-br.org/viewtopic … 313#p23313 found out about this problem earlier.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-28 18:12:19

vABS: Versioned Arch Build System & vpack helper

#2 2011-07-28 18:20:06

Re: vABS: Versioned Arch Build System & vpack helper

#3 2011-07-28 18:24:38

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#4 2011-07-28 18:31:45

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#5 2011-07-28 21:48:58

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#7 2011-07-28 22:10:35

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#11 2011-07-29 01:59:43

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#23 2011-09-11 22:17:28

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Re: vABS: Versioned Arch Build System & vpack helper

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