Cports is a collection of source package ports for Chimera. The system has been written specifically for the distribution using the Python scripting language.
From user standpoint, it works similarly to many distro packaging systems (users
of Void Linux xbps-src will most likely find it a little familiar) however it
is not based on any existing system and should not be considered a variant of any.
There are two authoritative documents on the system:
Usage.mdis the reference for users. It covers usage ofcbuildand its basic and advanced options as well as concepts and requirements.Packaging.mdis the reference manual for packagers. It covers the API of the system and guidelines for creating and modifying templates, but not usage.
Most people looking to get involved with the project should read both.
To get started, read Usage.md first.
You might want to test your built packages in an actual Chimera system. Since
cbuild creates a regular apk repository for you, this is as simple as
adding the repositories in your system.
Consider path to cports at /home/user/cports. The default repository path
for cbuild is the packages directory directly in cports. This is not
the actual repo yet, as there are multiple categories. The actual repositories
are those that have a directory named like your architecture (e.g. x86_64)
with the file APKINDEX.tar.gz in them.
Create a file /etc/apk/repositories.d/00-cports.list. The file must have
the .list extension. Put something like this in there:
/home/user/cports/packages/main
/home/user/cports/packages/user
This will give apk access to the main and user packages of your local
repository. You might want to restrict this list to only the repositories that
you have.
If you want access to local -dbg packages, you will also want to add the debug
sub-repositories, e.g. /home/user/cports/packages/main/debug.
You will also want to drop your signing public key in /etc/apk/keys. The key
can be located in etc/keys in the cports directory, with the .pub extension
(do not put in the private key).
You might also want to pin the local repository. This will effectively make apk
prefer your pinned repository even if a newer version if available in remote
repos. This is done by adding a prefix such as @cports before the repository
line, e.g. @cports /home/user/cports/packages/main. Then you can install things
from the repository like apk add foo@cports. If you just apk add foo, the
tagged repositories will be ignored.
Note that dependencies of packages from pinned repositories will still be pulled from unpinned repositories preferentially, but pinned repositories will be used if necessary. This is not the case for dependencies of packages from unpinned repositories, which will only ever be pulled from unpinned repositories.
For instructions on how to bootstrap the system into a target root as well as some more advanced tooling for e.g. creation of actual images, check out the chimera-live repository.