User:Gdk/PackagingSugarActivities101

DRAFT

THIS DOCUMENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. DO NOT RELY UPON IT, FOR IT WILL EAT YOUR BABIES.

Introduction

This is a simple, step-by-step lesson plan for becoming an effective Sugar activities packager for Fedora. There are a lot of steps involved, which makes the process look intimidating -- but really, it's pretty simple, and this lesson plan will take you through it. Follow these steps and you'll be an ace packager in no time at all.

We assume basic familiarity with Linux, understand how to install and uninstall RPM packages, familiarity with command-line usage, and basic scripting, programming, and sysadmin skills.

Background Reading

Estimated time: 30 minutes

It's a really great idea to read through the Creating a Package Howto before you get started. It's a big document, but that's okay; read through it once to get familiar with the ideas, and then we'll go through everything step by step here.

Packaging Your First Sugar Activity

LESSON 1: Setting Up Your System

Estimated time: 15 minutes

In order to create an RPM package, it's customary to set up a separate user on your Linux system called "makerpm", and then configuring an RPM build environment in that user's home directory. Instructions on how do that that can be found in the Creating a Package Howto.

Go follow those instructions now. When you're done, you should have a user named makerpm with a directory in your homedir named rpmbuild that looks something like this:

[makerpm@localhost rpmbuild]$ pwd
/home/makerpm/rpmbuild
[makerpm@localhost rpmbuild]$ ls
BUILD  RPMS  SOURCES  SPECS  SRPMS

LESSON 2: Rebuilding a Package

We'll start by rebuilding a Sugar activity that has already been packaged. Most of the work has already been done for us; we will examine the components of the package.

HOMEWORK: Creating a Package

Now that you've been through