Reference Manual¶

Key-Values¶

Single-Value Fields¶

Name¶

The name of your package. Corresponds to pkgname.

Name: my-package-name

Summary¶

The summary of your package.

Summary: A very awesome package

License¶

The license of your package.

License: GPL

URL¶

A URL to a human-readable homepage.

URL: https://phabricator.kde.org/source/discover/

Do. Link to a human-readable page, like a git forge.

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/plasma/%{version}/%{name}-%{version}.tar.xz

Don’t. Don’t link to sources.

Version¶

The version of the upstream item being packaged.

Version: 2.10

Release¶

The version of the package itself—increment this when you change the build recipe to get a different package when there’s not a new version of the thing being packaged.

Release: 5

Epoch¶

The epoch of your package. If the epoch for a package is higher than an older version, it will be considered an upgrade, regardless of the version and release.

Epoch:

Array Fields¶

Array fields can be specified like this:

Array: item
Array: item

# array is [item, item]

Or they can be specified like this:

Array: item item

Requires¶

Indicates a dependency that needs to be installed in order to use the package.

Requires: dependency

BuildRequires¶

Indicates a dependency that needs to be installed in order to build the package.

BuildRequires: dependency

CheckRequires¶

Indicates a dependency that needs to be installed in order to run tests on the package.

CheckRequires: dependency

Recommends¶

Indicates a dependency that can be installed to provide more features for a package. Do not use this to make parts of a package optional by breaking them with missing dependencies. Instead, use split packages.

Recommends: dependency

Provides¶

Indicates a virtual package that this package provides.

Provides: capability

Conflicts¶

Indicates a package that cannot be installed alongside this package.

Conflicts: dependency

Replaces¶

Indicates that this package should replace another package. pacman will attempt to replace the old one with this package when it becomes aware of it during a system upgrade.

Replaces: dependency

Groups¶

Groups that this package is part of.

Groups: qt5

Backup¶

Configuration files to back up:

Backup: /etc/pacman.conf

ExclusiveArch¶

Indicates that this package can only be compiled on the given architectures.

ExclusiveArch: x86_64

SourceX¶

Indicates a source to build a package with.

Source0: URL [with hashMethod hashValue] [with sig signatureFile] [with key pgpKey] [with keyserver keyserverURL]

PatchX¶

Indicates a patch to be applied on the package sources.

Patch0: URL [with hashMethod hashValue] [with sig signatureFile] [with key pgpKey] [with keyserver keyserverURL]

Hash Methods¶

Name
sha1	A sha1 sum to verify the source with
sha224	A sha224 sum to verify the source with
sha256	A sha256 sum to verify the source with
sha384	A sha384 sum to verify the source with
sha512	A sha512 sum to verify the source with
md5	A md5 sum to verify the source with

Directives¶

Build Recipe¶

Prepare¶

Commands to prepare the package for compilation. Normally, you can omit this directive and assume you’re starting in the extracted root of Source0 if it is a tarball and you don’t need to apply patches.

%prep
commands

Build¶

Commands to compile the package or otherwise produce the end result.

%build
commands

Install¶

Commands to install the final package into the virtual filesystem for compressing.

%install
commands

Check¶

Commands to run tests on the package.

%check
commands

Scriptlets¶

Small scripts that run at key points in transactions.

%scriptlet
commands

Scriptlet	Description	Arguments
`%pre_install`	Run before files are extracted when installing a package.	`$1`: package version.
`%post_install`	Run after files are extracted when installing a package.	`$1`: package version.
`%pre_upgrade`	Run before files are extracted when updating a package.	`$1`: old package version. `$2`: new package version.
`%post_upgrade`	Run after files are extracted when updating a package.	`$1`: old package version. `$2`: new package version.
`%pre_remove`	Run before files are removed when removing a package.	`$1`: package version.
`%post_remove`	Run after files are removed when removing a package.	`$1`: package version.

Changelog¶

A changelog describing changes to a package.

%changelog
New in version 2.10
  - More hellos!
  - yadda yadda

Split Packages¶

Splitting packages.

Declaring a split package¶

%package (-n) name

Declares a new split package called $PARENT_NAME-$NAME. If -n is provided, the name is used verbatim instead of appending it to the parent package’s name.

Moving files to a split package¶

%files (-n) name

Specifies a files section for a split package. Like %package, -n will cause name to be used verbatim. Files are listed based on their location in the parent package, like so:

%files translationfiles
/usr/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/hello.mo

Files are interpreted as regex.

The following macros are provided as shorthand for the GNU install directories:

Macro	Default Location
`%{_prefix}`	`/usr`
`%{_bindir}`	`/usr/bin`
`%{_sbindir}`	`/usr/sbin`
`%{_libexecdir}`	`/usr/libexec`
`%{_datadir}`	`/usr/share`
`%{_sysconfdir}`	`/etc`
`%{_includedir}`	`/usr/include`
`%{_mandir}`	`/usr/share/man`
`%{_infodir}`	`/usr/share/info`

Scriptlets¶

%scriptlet (-n) name

Key-Values¶

%package extension
Summary: A totally cool extension for %{name}