PyMaemo/Scratchboxless packaging guide

(Preparing the package)
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  Section: user/other # Section should start with user/ to appear in the menu.
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  Depends: python-gtk2 # add extra dependencies here
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Make sure to use [http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_packaging#Sections an allowed section] - otherwise autobuilder will give a warning.
== Building the packages ==
== Building the packages ==

Revision as of 22:35, 15 June 2010

Contents

Introduction

The usual way of developing Maemo applications is using or Scratchbox or MADDE, which are quite heavy for Python development. An alternative is using stdeb, a set of extensions to distutils that allows generating debian packages, both binary and source, that can be installed on the device or sent to the extras-devel repository.

This tutorial will show how to integrate it into your project, building the packages and uploading it to extras-devel.

Prerequisites

This tutorial is aimed at Debian-based systems, as some stdeb commands requires the dpkg tools installed. In

Also, you should get the git version of stdeb to use the debianize command, as it is a new addition and not yet available in the repositories.

As only python2.5 is supported in pymaemo, it should be installed if you want to create binary packages. On Ubuntu Lucid (10.04), you can install it from this ppa, following the instructions here.

Preparing the package

As stdeb extends distutils, it is necessary that you have a working setup.py script. For our example application, which consists of a single script named "myscript" and support files like .desktop [1] and an icon, the setup.py will look like this:

from distutils.core import setup
 
setup(
    name='myscript',
    version='0.1',
    author='Lauro Moura',
    author_email='lauro.neto@donotspamme.com',
    scripts=['myscript'],
    data_files=[('share/applications/hildon', ['myscript.desktop']),
                ('share/pixmaps', ['myscript.png'])],
)

A file named stdeb.cfg in the same directory as setup.py is required, with stdeb maemo-specific options. A detailed list of options can be found in the stdeb website.

[DEFAULT]
XS-Python-Version: 2.5 # Only version currently supported by pymaemo.
Package:myscript # Binary package name. stdeb adds the prefix "python-" by default
Section: user/other # Section should start with user/ to appear in the menu.
Depends: python-gtk2 # add extra dependencies here

Make sure to use an allowed section - otherwise autobuilder will give a warning.

Building the packages

The basic command is

python setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command bdist_deb

It'll create a folder called deb_dist with the source and binary packages. Alternatively, the "sdist_dsc" command will create only the source package.

After generating, you can copy the package to your device and install it (requires an SSH server):

$ scp myscript_0.1-1_all.deb root@<n900 ip>:/root
$ ssh root@<n900 ip>
# dpkg -i myscript_0.1-1_all.deb

Building a basic debian directory

Another useful command is debianize. It will read the configuration file and write a directory named debian in the same directory. This can be used for manually creating the packages using dpkg tools directly.

Note: sdist_dsc and bdist_deb do not use this directory, generating a new one in the source dir under deb_dist/.

Uploading to extras

To upload to extras, use the debianize command and then call dpkg-buildpackage:

$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -us -S

This command will create the .dsc, .tar.gz and .changes files that can be used to upload the application to extras-devel

Future work

Support for non-debian systems.

References

[1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Desktop_file_format