Build (backport) an newer Ubuntu package to run on an older Ubuntu version

[jdong]

New -4 release posted for Dapper branch... It adds a new command, "prevu-chroot", which logs into a build environment and bind-mounts /tmp. In other words, you can run X11 programs from within a clean environment. For example, if I just backported gedit and want to test it, I'd do:

(1) sudo prevu-chroot
(2) apt-get install gedit
(3) gedit



Upon exiting, this test environment will destroy itself and life goes on

[Angafirith]

When Feisty development gets underway, will we be able to use the current version of prevu to backport from Feisty to Edgy? If not, will a new one be released for Edgy?

[jdong]

I am planning to make a Feisty version of prevu soon... basically all that's involved is replace all occurrences of dapper in the prevu scripts to edgy, and all edgy to feisty.

I'm considering making one version of prevu (likely gonna be 0.3 or 0.4) that is capable of taking in a -t flag for specifying which distro on the fly, but that adds more complexity to prevu than I'd like.

[jdong]

New prevu release 0.3, original post updated with new information. Basically, what's new is the ability to build against different versions of Ubuntu. By default, it'll build packages for your current version of Ubuntu, but that can be overridden with the DIST environment variable.


For example: You are running Edgy. All the prevu commands will be for building Edgy backports by default. However, you have a Dapper system you want to build packages for. You can run:

DIST=dapper sudo prevu-init
DIST=dapper prevu packagename

Then, Dapper packages will show up in /var/cache/prevu/dapper-debs. Note that you only need to run prevu-init once per distro version.


The /var/cache/prevu directory layout has changed slightly to accomodate this new feature, so if you're upgrading, you're recommended to delete /var/cache/prevu and re-initialize prevu.

[jdong]

Follow-up 0.3.2 released;

The notable new feature is the ability to specify a .dsc file to build. This can either be a local file (i.e. you downloaded the .dsc, .orig.tar.gz, and the .diff.gz from somewhere) or a URL (such as the .dsc links you find on packages.ubuntu/debian.org when you search for a source package) to the .dsc file.

[zenrox]

and you have 4.1 ver that does what now

[jdong]

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-...anch/prevu/dev

Usually the bzr branch changelog can answer those questions....

It's a non-important upgrade to users, the internal code was rewritten to be more organized for easier maintainability.


BTW, prevu will be entering Universe soon

[zenrox]

sweet

[jdong]

I rebuilt and re-posted version 0.4.1-0ubuntu1 on Sourceforge. This new release fixes two significant issues, and users are encouraged to upgrade:

(1) Prevu always copies the sources to a temporary working directory. Any sources you unpack will not be modified (this prevents prevu from inserting unwanted changelog entries into your own work)

(2) Prevu now invokes pdebuild differently, which prevents some erroneous build failures due to build-deps not being present on the host. (for example, the absence of cdbs causes lots of packages to fail backporting even though they backport fine)

[foxy123]

I've got a problem with version 0.4.1. It works fine and reports building a package:

dpkg-deb: building package `dvd+rw-tools' in `../dvd+rw-tools_6.1-2ubuntu1~6.06prevu1_i386.deb'.
 dpkg-genchanges
dpkg-genchanges: not including original source code in upload
dpkg-buildpackage: binary and diff upload (original source NOT included)
Copying back the cached apt archive contents
 -> unmounting dev/pts filesystem
 -> unmounting proc filesystem
 -> unmounting /var/cache/prevu/src/5849 filesystem
 -> unmounting /var/cache/prevu/dapper-debs filesystem
 -> cleaning the build env
    -> removing directory /var/cache/prevu/builds/5929 and its subdirectories
** Success!. You can find source packages and .debs at /var/cache/prevu/dapper-debs **

but /var/cache/prevu/dapper-debs is empty

I tried a couple of times and even removed /var/cache/prevu and reinitialised prevu, still no avail. Should I file a bug?