
		src2pkg - trackinstall
		Copyright 2005-2007 Gilbert Ashley <amigo@ibiblio.org>
		
	Note: src2pkg was formerly called PkgBuild.
	Starting with version-1.0 the name has been changed to 'src2pkg'
	to avoid possible conflicts or confusion with other software.
	
	src2pkg is a system for creating installable Slackware-type
	'.tgz' packages from source code or other content, using a
	simple src2pkg script (really more like a spec file) or by
	using the command-line tools 'src2pkg' or 'trackinstall'.
	Both of these tools can also write a script for you, which
	can be easily customized with extra options or commands.
	
	For building packages from pre-compiled sources use the
	'trackinstall' tool. It works pretty much like checkinstall,
	creating a package from content in the current directory.
	It can also easily create packages from the content created
	by running common installation scripts like 'install.sh',even
	if they are interactive scripts.
	
	For building most packages from source code, src2pkg is a
	better alternative as it lets you control and/or document
	the most common src2pkg options for the whole process.
	
	src2pkg can also work directly with SRPM packages. Decompression
	is handled by the program 'disrpm' which is installed in /usr/bin.
	It is not necessary to have rpm or rpm2cpio installed.
	
	src2pkg can also re-package binary packages such as binary RPM
	packages and Debian '.deb' archives. Decompression of Debian
	archives is also handled by disrpm, an excellent program
	written by <bjdouma@xs4all.nl>. disrpm can even unpack some 
	rpm's where rpm2tgz and rpm2cpio fail. This provides a much better
	conversion than using rpm2tgz for other reasons as well -src2pkg
	will check the directory and file permissions to make sure they
	are Slackware-compatible, move documents and man-pages into the
	proper directory for Slackware. It will even show you if you have
	all the required libraries installed on your system for running
	the program. It also provides a valid slack-desc file to insure
	that the package can be properly installed and removed using
	installpkg and removepkg. And it will do this for debian or other
	binary packages as well as rpm packages. (In fact, it will even 
	repack a Slackware package! While that may sound silly, it makes
	it possible to easily unpack, verify and repackage possibly faulty
	packages that you download)
	
	After installing src2pkg, you can run 'src2pkg -h' and
	'trackinstall -h', or 'man src2pkg' & 'man trackinstall' to see
	the options available.
	
	src2pkg can work with archives already on your system or, if
	given a valid URL, it will also download the source archive.
	In the same way, src2pkg can download and run a *.src2pkg script.
	
	src2pkg can also be used to update and/or execute existing
	.src2pkg or .PkgBuild scripts.
	
	src2pkg is able to configure and compile, or otherwise prepare, many
	different kinds of content for packaging. Heuristic methods are used
	to find the type of content and how to prepare it for packaging. These
	methods are based on experience with thousands of real cases so src2pkg
	is often able to successfully prepare content without any extra options
	or user-intervention. In the same way, src2pkg does many rigorous checks
	and performs corrections on the package content before creating the finished
	compressed package. This is all done automatically by default, but src2pkg
	will show prompts when these are done. Sometimes these prompts are labeled
	as warnings and show yellow-colored text, before performing the correction.
	If you don't like to use these features, or if they cause problems with
	a particular package, they can be disabled individually.
	
	For more details, see the html help pages and examples in this directory.
	The code itself also has many comments which explain very technical aspects
	of src2pkg. The configuration file /etc/src2pkg/src2pkg.conf contains
	some useful notes for setting up certain preferences or for using src2pkg
	with architectures other than ix86.


	