LEAP SOP

Introduction

This wiki page describes the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for releasing LEAP like packaging-related processes. It also includes packaging standards, common fixes, patch resources, and debugging methods.

Package building

Fetching source

Source packages are located under 7.x directory on http://vault.centos.org/. There are several types of repository:

os

Base packages

updates

Package updates

extra

Extra packages such as docker, cockpit, golang, etc.

While there is no Rsync repository for CentOS source rpms, they can only be downloaded manually through curl/wget or yum. Therefore, creating a bash script to automate download processes is highly recommended.

Determine problem

If a package fails to be built on Koji, there are several possibilities causing it:

• Package name is not added to the pkg list of the tag
• Package only supports the architectures on ExclusiveArch list in the spec file
• Same version of the package already existed on Koji
• Repository of the build-tag is being regenerated or broken
• Package spec contains RHEL or CentOS specific rpm macros
• Missing Dependency
• Package has to be patched in order to be built on AArch64 platform

Common errors and solutions

Code compilation error

Reason: Certain pulled library is too old

Solution: Try to build all other packages and then rebuild this one

Cannot detect system type

Reason: The software uses outdated config.guess and config.sub to autodetect system type

Solution: Replace both files in the source with the latest online version. See https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/config_002eguess.html

Unknown system type

Reason: The software only allows it to be built with kernel 2.6/3.x

Solution: Add 4.x support to the system checking script (just a IF statement of checking version number)

Build test/check failed

Reason: Can be random reasons or the software is just unable to run perfectly on AArch64

Solution: Try to look for solutions, otherwise comment out the %check section in spec file

BuildError: No matching arches were found

Reason: Package only supports specific architectures on the ExclusiveArch list in spec file

Solution: Checkout similar version of the package on Fedora ARM Koji and CentOS AArch64 repo and determine whether the package is possible to support AArch64 or not

Fail to patch

Reason: Wrong patches or sources were packed into the source rpm

Solution: Retrieve the original CentOS src.rpm and repack it again, see also: #Duplicated source name

Resources

• Previous build of the package
• CentOS AArch64 repo: http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7
• Fedora ARM Koji: http://arm.koji.fedoraproject.org
• CentOS git repo (for reverting CentOS changes): http://git.centos.org
• GOOGLE

Source modification

There a few standards to follow during modification to make life easier:

• Add comments about any line changes
• Add the word LEAP at the beginning of any comments, for example:

# LEAP Add AArch64 support
ExclusiveArch: x86_64 aarch64

• When commenting out a existing line of code, add one more % before any rpm macro otherwise rpmbuild will treat it as a error/warning. For instance:

# Before commenting out
cp %{SOURCE1} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_datadir}/virt-tools

# After
# cp %%{SOURCE1} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%%{_datadir}/virt-tools

• Add .leap after the release version, add .leap.1, .leap.2 ... and so on for further modifications

• Make sure to specify all the changes under the %changelog section:

*  Fri Mar 25 2016 Foo Bar <foo.bar@example.com> - 1:1.28.1-1.55.leap
- Add AArch64 support
- Roll in LEAP Branding

Re-branding

The packages that contain the extension .centos in their release version are branded packages. In order to properly re-branding those packages for LEAP, here is the checklist:

• Replace the word "CentOS" or "CentOS Linux" with "LEAP", and "centos" with "leap" in spec package descriptions and patches (make sure they are branding-related)
• Replace CentOS branding patches with LEAP one
  • If certain patch file contains author name, regenerate the patch with your own name instead of modifying the patch directly
• Replace CentOS links with links for LEAP accordingly
• Sometimes Red Hat trademarks and links have to be replaced as well
• Remove CentOS/RHEL certificates, binaries, or any enterprise support files

Particular cases

libreport / abrt

Libreport and abrt are the library and application for automatic bug detection and reporting to RHEL bug tracker servers. Since CentOS added several significant patches to both packages for supporting their own bug tracker, removing those patches can be very complicated process. The best way to solve this problem is retrieving the original RHEL versions from http://git.centos.org, add our own de-branding patches, and bump the version-release number + .leap to match the requirements of dependency.

ntp / chrony / PackageKit / system-config-date

These packages contain network time protocol configurations pointing to the NTP pool address: pool.VENDERZONE.ntp.org . By default, they are pointing to pool.centos.ntp.org. Since ntp pool for LEAP hasn't been set up, it is necessary to remove any .VENDERZONE (system-config-date one has a different name) in the spec files instead of just replacing the brand.

grub2 / shim / shim-signed / system-config-kdump

There is a important variable efidir in the patches and specs in these packages. It represents the name of the EFI directory containing all the EFI boot files. Make sure the value of efidir changed to leap.

oscap-anaconda-addon / oscap-security-guide

TODO

Build order

It is safer and more time-efficient to build certain essential packages before any other packages are built, because other packages are very likely to depend on them:

• leap-release - the base of entire distribution
• gcc, glibc, make, binutils - basic toolchain
• coreutils - basic system tools
• xorg-x11-server - xorg-x11-drv* always require the specific version of xorg-x11-server they are built with

Duplicated source name

A few packages in the package set contain patches or sources having identical file names. When installing source rpms to rpmbuild tree ($HOME/rpmbuild/*), try to avoid installing too many of them at the same time (50+). Wipe the rpmbuild tree after finishing modification and build of those packages on Koji. There are a few problematic packages have been discovered:

• java-1.7.0-openjdk and java-1.8.0-openjdk
• xorg-x11-drv-dummy and xorg-x11-drv-fbdev

Other special cases

• libreoffice - Require at least 50GB of space to build
• binutils - was intentionally upgraded to 2.24, be careful not to downgrade it.
• httpd - centos-noindex.tar.gz contains branded default webpages, replace it with leap-noindex.tar.gz from previous version of httpd

Fixing broken dependencies

After all of the packages have been done, it's time to fix minor broken dependencies. repoclosure and leap-closure-report.sh (by Chris Markieta) are the tools to check dependency stats of a repository. You should always check the build-tag repository since new packages may require some of the old packages.

When a package requires a missing shared library file like xxxxx-3.so, it only need to be rebuilt again (if the library exists) in order to pick up the latest .so file from the latest version of required library.

Release

More coming ...