Project-Builder.org is a new GPL v2 tool designed to help projects developers producing easily packages for multiple OS and architectures, on a regular basis, from a single source repository.

1. Project-Builder.org
Project Builder:
A GPL continuous
packaging solution
Bruno Cornec
Open Source and Linux
Profession EMEA Lead
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 1

2. Project-Builder.org
Introducting myself
Software engineering and Unices since 1988
Mostly Configuration Management Systems (CMS), Build systems,
quality tools, on multiple commercial Unix systems
Discover Open Source & Linux (OSL) & first contributions in 1993
Full time on OSL since 1995, first as HP reseller then @HP
Currently:
Technology Architect on OSL for the HP/Intel Solution Center, Grenoble
OSL HP Ambassador
EMEA OSL HP Profession Lead
Solutions Linux Conference board member
MondoRescue, Dploy.org, Project-Builder.org project lead
LinuxCOE, mrepo, tellico, rinse, fossology contributor
Mandriva, Fedora packager
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 2

3. Project-Builder.org
What is the problem ?
Users / Sysadmins environment:
>= 90%
< 10%
Users: easyness (GUI, CLI)
Admins: distribution compliance, < 1%
smooth integration – reduce admin load
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 3

4. Project-Builder.org
What is the problem ?
Developers environment:
Flat Files Sourceforge
ftp, web
Project
autotools ?
CVS Install proc ?
Soft. Eng. ?
CMS SVN Fear of distro ?
GIT, ...
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 4

5. Project-Builder.org
What is the problem ?
Packagers environment:
Distro
ftp, web
Flat Files
Package
Does s/he only exists ? CVS
On time ? Lag behind ? CMS SVN rpmlint ?
Distro coverage (ver, #) lintian ?
Beta avail ? GIT, ...
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 5

6. Project-Builder.org
What is the solution ?
Packaging should be a project concern as well as coding,
testing, installing, .... especially for smaller projects
Package early, package always
Use packaging as your only way of delivery (not a dream)
Overhead minimal (not much longer than providing a
tgz), maximum benefit (consistancy, reproduceability,
team work improvement, distribution integration,
improved deployment)
Packaging is in fact a marketing activity based on a
technical content. It's an easy way to extend your user
base, and improve your community. Makes tests easy.
THE SOLUTION IS CONTINUOUS PACKAGING
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 6

7. Project-Builder.org
Multi platform life cycle
User Requirements Validation
Functional Integration tests
Specification
Design
Unit tests
Specification
Coding
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 7

8. Project-Builder.org
My answer
I'm a sysadmin so I want to deal with packages only
(deployment server integration)
I'm a developer so I want to ease my tests without
screwing up my system and testing as a std user/admin
I'm a a packager so I want to streamline that work for
new projects I'm interested in packaging
I'm the marketing department of my own project and use
packages as a “competitive advantage”
I'm a software engineer and want no duplication of code
nor information (metadata)
Founding no tool existing to help me doing all that, so I
started writing one to scratch my own itch
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 8

9. Project-Builder.org
Goals
Project-builder main goal is to help you package
continuously being agnostic:
CMS agnostic (no CMS but guys it's 21st century now,
SVN, CVS, Mercurial, GIT, SVK....)
OS agnostic: Linux: RPM, deb, ebuild, slack based, ...
60+ distros at the moment – repositories for yum,
urpmi, apt. Solaris pkg.
Build environment agnostic: local, VM (QEMU, KVM...),
VE (rinse, mock, debootstrap...)
No project impact (preserves the md5sum of the
delivered upstream sources). Can be completely
external.
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 9

10. Project-Builder.org
Multi platform development cycle
.o .o .o
.o .o
.o .o
< 5%
SSPK
.a
90+% .o .o .o
.o
.o .o
SLPK .a
< 10%
.o .o .o
.o
.o .o
.o
.o
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 10

11. Project-Builder.org
Goodies
Project-builder provides additional goodies:
Set of existing VMs/VEs or easy to recreate
Macro system with perl variables to avoid duplication
Skeleton generation to help starting
Manages delivery up to your ftp server (ssh based)
Manages announces on mailing lists
May use snapshot features of VMs/VEs
Integration of tests in the process
Manages patches when not upstream
Checks validity of packages built (lintian, rpmlint)
Easy creation of new versions for upstream
management
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 11

12. Project-Builder.org
Architecture
ftp/ssh/nfs
server
mail
server
2 upstream
Web/ftp server
ebuild 2 upstream
CMS repository
5 2
CHROOT upstream
file/dir
4
1 pbconf
Web/ftp server
3 1 pbconf
local packaging CMS repository
& test system
project-builder.org 1 pbconf
file/dir
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 12

13. Project-Builder.org
The Big picture
Packagers newvm / setupvm
newver / newproj
build2vm
cms2build
Packages
Project
pkg2ssh
build2pkg
Developers build2ssh
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 13

14. Project-Builder.org
Commands
cms2build: Create tar files for the project under your CMS. CMS supported
are SVN and CVS parameters are packages to build if not using default list
build2pkg: Create packages for your running distribution
build2ssh: Send the tar files to a SSH host
pkg2ssh: Send the packages built to a SSH host
build2vm, build2ve: Create packages in VMs/VEs, launching them if needed
and send those packages to a SSH host once built
launchvm: Launch one virtual machine
script2vm, script2ve: Launch a VM/VE if needed and executes a script on it
test2vm, test2ve: Test inside a VM/VE
newvm, newve: Create a new virtual machine
setupvm, setupve: Setup a virtual machine for pb usage
newver: Create a new version of the project derived from the current one
newproj: Create a new project and a template set of configuration files under
pbconf
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 14

15. Project-Builder.org
Multi platform packaging cycle
VMs/VEs
Developers
Packages
VM/VE
Packagers
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 15

16. Project-Builder.org
To be done
More Tests on VEs (mock, debootstrap to be done, rinse
OK + patches) LSB chroot support.
Support for libvirt, virsh
Other CMS (Bazaar, …) only when/if needed
Other VMs (VMWare, Xen, ...) only when/if needed
Multiple delivery means
Look at interactions with Buildbot
Add signature support
Create a reference documentation
Config-Model for configuration file management
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 16

17. Project-Builder.org
Web Project-Builder Trac / Wiki
http://trac.project-builder.org
Resources Open Source at HP
http://opensource.hp.com
Other tools:
SuSE/Fedora/Mandriva Build
Systems, Buildbot, vcs-pkg.org
“The evolution of FLOSS
and the Internet are
tightly coupled”
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 17

18. Project-Builder.org
Bruno_Cornec@hp.com
Contact
(Linux Solution Consultant in the
HP/Intel Solution Center)
http://www.hp.com/linux
”Changes are never easy to
make.
There is comfort and safety
in tradition, but change must
come, no matter how painful
or expensive it may be.” Linus Torvalds, Richard
Bill Hewlett Stallman, Eric Raymond, Nat
Makarevitch, René Cougnenc,
Eric Dumas, Rémy Card, Bdale
Thanks Garbee, Hugo Rabson, Gallig
Renaud, Andree Leidenfrost
among others, for their work
and devotion to the Open
Source Software cause... and
my family for his patience :-)
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 18

19. Project-Builder.org
History
V0.1-v0.4: script shells – linked to mondorescue – Usage
of QEMU to generate cross distros packages
V0.5 (08/2007): rewritten in perl, keeping the principles,
independent of the project – pbconf in the project –
filtering support with macros – PoC state
V0.6: support multiple versions, perl conventions
V0.7: perl env var substitution in conf files for macros –
first usage for mondorescue and itself including VM.
V0.8: functionaly similar to the original scripts (except ML,
announces, ...). Multi CMS support. Trac BR. Removes
AppConfig dep
V0.9: re-architectured for no project impact (pbconf
outside of project, multi-conf file support, CMS
independance, VM/VE, separate tar files for build info...)
© Bruno Cornec / HP - Document under/sous CC 3.0 by SA Date : 02/06/2010 Page 19