PbuilderHowto

Introduction

This document describes the steps to setup a chroot for build Ubuntu packages using pbuilder. It's recommended for Ubuntu maintainers or anyone interested in building packages using HoaryHedgehog.

You can build packages without pbuilder but you will need all the build dependencies of the package that you need to build installed in your running system.

Hoary chroot

Install pbuilder package.

Edit /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc changing the following directives:

    MIRRORSITE=http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
    DISTRIBUTION=hoary

Since pbuilder will complain about unauthenticated packages, you have to allow unauthenticated packages. You can make it like so:

edit your /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc:

    APTCONFDIR="/etc/pbuilder/apt.config/"

now you'll copy needed files of /etc/apt to it and

    sudo mkdir /etc/pbuilder/apt.config/
    sudo cp -ar /etc/apt/* /etc/pbuilder/apt.config/
    sudo touch /etc/pbuilder/apt.config/apt.conf.d/allow-unauthenticated

and add the following line to /etc/pbuilder/apt.config/apt.conf.d/allow-unauthenticated

    APT::Get::AllowUnauthenticated 1;

NOTE: Make sure to remove 99update-notifier from /etc/pbuilder/apt.config/apt.conf.d/ if you have copied it in the last step. It can potentially break future updates to your pbuilder chroot, as update-notifier wont normally be installed.

Save the file and run the command below to build your hoary chroot:

    sudo pbuilder create --distribution hoary

Rebuilding a package

If you reach this point you're now with a Hoary chroot ready to build a package. We will get a Debian source package from Ubuntu repository to test it.

Check if you can download source packages, you will need a uncommented deb-src line at /etc/apt/sources.list, containing:

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

If the line above is there but not uncommented, uncomment it and run 'sudo apt-get update'.

We will build bc, a simple calculator, from source, let's download the debian source package from ubuntu repository:

    sudo apt-get source bc

You can build the package using your Hoary chroot with the command:

    sudo pbuilder build *.dsc

In the end, the binary and source package will be at /var/cache/pbuilder/result/

Updating Hoary chroot

I recommend you update your chroot before each build, to this task use the comand below:

    sudo pbuilder update

Universe support

If you want to rebuild a package from universe or build a new one that needs a package out of main you will need to edit /etc/pbuilderrc again, changing:

OTHERMIRROR="deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe"

Now you need to update your chroot with the new configuration:

    sudo pbuilder update --distribution hoary --override-config

Upgrading to Breezy

If you want to participate in the current release cycle, you will want to have a BreezyBadger chroot.

• change all occurences of hoary in /etc/pbuilderrc and /etc/pbuilderrc/apt.config/ to breezy

• sudo pbuilder update --override-config

See also

pbuilder User's Manual: http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder-doc/pbuilder-doc.html