Unports

Unports is a humble attempt to provide an easy to use personal package management system. It is strongly inspired by the FreeBSD Ports and aims to recreate their simplicity and general structure. It was also influenced by Portage used in Gentoo Linux.

FEATURES

no root privileges required
extremely simple package format
distro-agnostic, works the same everywhere

DEPENDENCIES

git
make
quilt
stow
tar
wget

OK, BUT WHAT DOES IT DO?

At its core, Unports installs each program it manages into ~/pkgs/SOME_NAME and then merges all the ~/pkgs/* directory trees into ~/local with GNU Stow which creates a directory similar to /usr or /usr/local. The package format is meant to be as simple as possible and to automatically guess as much as it sanely can (for example automatic basic Autotools and CMake support).

To install Unports, run ./install.sh and answer the questions it will ask. It will explain each action it is about to make and let you abort at any point.

EXAMPLES

To see what Unports means by “extremely simple” consider these packages:

a package for a release of ncdu

PKG = ncdu
VER = 1.13
URL = https://dev.yorhel.nl/download/$(ARCHIVE)

include ../unports.mk

a package for GNU Emacs, the master branch from the Git repository

PKG = emacs
VER = git
URL = https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/$P.git --depth 1

MAKEOPTS = -j5

include ../unports.mk

another package for GNU Emacs, this time with a numbered version, also from Git

PKG = emacs
VER = git
URL = https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/$P.git -b $(BRANCH) --depth 1

BRANCH = emacs-26.1
MAKEOPTS = -j5

include ../unports.mk

Installation

To start using Unports, simply copy the unports directory into ~/ports (other directories will work too but it’s the default used by the installer) and start filling it with your packages/ports (one directory = one port). Try copying there some of the examples first to see how it works. So your first package would be placed in ~/ports/my-package and contain at minimum the file ~/ports/my-package/Makefile.

You can also run ./install.sh which does more or less the same thing.

Syntax

Usually an unport consists of only a Makefile with these 4 lines:

PKG = some-name
VER = version
URL = https://example.com
include ../unports.mk

Variables:

PKG: The name of the package, for example emacs. It defaults to the current directory name.
VER: The package version, usually a number like 1.9.2 but almost anything else is fine too. The value git has a special meaning here, see below.
URL: The meaning of URL depends on VER. If VER is set to git, Unports expects URL to be a Git repository, otherwise URL is a simple URL to the archive. URL can also contain additional Git flags in the former case, such as --depth or --branch.

Additionally the variable P is a shorthand for PKG, V for VER and PV is the same as $(P)-$(V), like in the Portage ebuilds.

Optional variables:

MAKEOPTS: Can be used to pass some options to the make program used to build the package, for example -j5 to utilize multiple CPUs.
NO_BUILD = 1: Skip the configure and build steps. Useful for example for the Python projects.
DEPENDS: List of commands needed by the package to be present in the system. Unports won’t install these dependencies and doesn’t enforce them on its own but they can be checked with the depends target or enforced by using this target before the intended one, for example make depends merge. Treat $(DEPENDS) more like a reminder what to install than a true dependency management solution.

Optional variables for Git-based packages:

BRANCH: Can be used to select a Git branch, default: master.
REPO: The name of the fetched bare repository, default: $(P).git.
PKGNAME: Explained below, defaults to $(PV)-$(BRANCH) (or $(P)-git-$(BRANCH) in this case).

Optional variables for archive-based packages:

ARCHIVE: The name of the downloaded archive, defaults to: $(PV).tar.gz.
PKGNAME: This archive is expected to contain a directory called $(PKGNAME) which defaults to (PV).

In both cases $(PKGNAME) will also be used as the directory name in ~/pkgs.

Targets

The installation process in Unports consists of these targets:

fetch: Download the sources (dependency: either git or wget).
extract: Unpack the sources (dependency: either git or tar).
patch: Apply the patches if there are any (dependency: quilt).
configure: Prepare the build process.
build: Compile the package.
install: Copy the program to its own directory (by default ~/pkgs/PROGRAM).
merge: Symlink the program to the common directory (by default ~/local; dependency: GNU Stow).

Each of these targets may be invoked separately and each one will first run all the previous ones if needed. For example make extract will download and unpack the sources.

FETCH

If VER is set to git, fetch clone the URL repository with the --bare flag.

If VER isn’t set to git, it download the file pointed with URL. This file’s name should be stored in ARCHIVE (defaults to $(PV).tar.gz).

EXTRACT

If VER is set to git, clone locally the previously fetched bare repository into a normal repository with a regular working tree.

If VER isn’t set to git, use tar to unpack the previously downloaded archive.

PATCH

Symlink the patches directory from the package directory to the project source tree unpacked in the previous step. Afterwards apply all the patches in the Quilt series with quilt push -a.

If the patches directory doesn’t exist, do nothing.

CONFIGURE

Run ./configure --prefix=$(PREFIX) in the project source tree if configure exists. Calls ./autogen.sh beforehand too if it exists. If neither of these files exists, this step effectively does nothing.

Can be overriden with a script called script/configure. The script is started in the project source tree.

BUILD

Run make $(MAKEOPTS) in the project source tree.

Can be overriden with a script called script/build. The script is started in the project source tree.

INSTALL

Run make PREFIX=$(PREFIX) install in the project source tree to install it into $(PREFIX), by default ~/pkgs/$(PV).

Can be overriden with a script called script/install. The script is started in the project source tree.

MERGE

Run stow -v -t ~/local -S $(PREFIX) to merge the new package into ~/local. ~/local may be actually overriden with the STOWDIR variable but it was not tested.

More targets

There are also a few cleanup targets:

reset: Forget which patch/configure/build steps were already performed so they will be remade.
clean: Remove the project source tree.
distclean: remove the whole working directory.

Each of these steps performs the previous one too.

unmerge: Undo the merge step.
deinstall: Undo the merge and install steps.

Helpers:

depends: Checks whether the commands specified in the $(DEPENDS) variable exist in the system. Prints each one with a “+” or “-“ respectively and exits with the code signifying how many were missing.

COPYRIGHT

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of ports nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

unports