User:Timothee Flutre/Notebook/Postdoc/2012/11/27

How to make a GNU package?

• find a name for the package, for instance "mypkg"

• structure the package directory:

mkdir mypkg; cd mypkg
touch COPYING README INSTALL NEWS AUTHORS ChangeLog
mkdir src build-aux doc test #lib scripts

• populate the src/ directory with your code, e.g. hello.cpp

• retrieve the license, for instance GPLv3:

wget -O COPYING http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt

• fill the information files, such as README, INSTALL...

• use Autotools (see tutorial):

touch configure.ac Makefile.am src/Makefile.am doc/Makefile.am #and edit
autoreconf --install
./configure #can be followed by --prefix=~/bin, LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib, etc
make
make check

• write some documentation in Texinfo:

 cd doc
 wget -O fdl.texi http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/*checkout*/gnustandards/fdl.texi?root=gnustand
ards&content-type=text%2Fplain
 touch manual.texi #and edit
 make pdf

• make your package available to anyone:

make install
make distcheck #can be followed by DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS=LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib for instance
tar tzvf mypkg-0.1.tar.gz #to check what is in the release

• share your code, for instance on GitHub (see my tips)