Porting Parcellite

In this post I will describe how I ported Parcellite, a clip board manager to Solaris using IPS.

When I learnt that i could port any application to Solaris, I first visited http://sourceforge.net, where you get thousands of free and open source applications.I chose to start with a lightweight application based on GTK called Parcellite, a clipboard manager.

I downloaded the tar file, and quicky uncompressed it and ran the following commands.

- . /configure.

- make.

- make install.

On running  ./configure, i found out that i had an older version of some GTK libraries,I updated them, and then it ran fine. I specified the install directory and Parcellite was installed.

What I had to do next was to write the spec file. I refered to some other spec files and all i had to do was fill in application details.I breezed through the easier parts, that was until %setup.

My %build was not a problem as well.I found the following blog very helpful.

http://blogs.sun.com/simons/entry/how_to_contribute_a_package

Now i had to test my spec file. I ran . /opt/dtbld/bin/env.sh and set the environment.Then with fingers crossed i ran pkgtool –download build-only parcellite.spec. It failed.

I realised i had forgotten to attatch the copyright file.I went to the parcellite tar file, renamed the COPYING file as parcellite.copyright and put it in my home/packages/SOURCES directory. I then ran the pkgtool again. It was a success! Next i went to jucr.opensolaris.org and submitted my packages.

I followed parcellite up with more applications.Similarly I ported gController, 1337 leet-text-convertor and gTubeclock. I faced a lot of problems but as always the satisfaction i got after completing it cant be described !

~ by varun686 on June 15, 2009.