Chapter 14. Creating distribution files

Table of Contents

14.1. Supported formats

During the development of your project, you will want to release versions periodically. The package will be (usually) distributed in the form of a distribution file, which is a compressed archive containing the sources[12].

To create a distribution file, simply execute the buildtool dist command from the top level directory of your source package. A distribution file will be created in the parent directory.

The format of the distribution file is mandated by the BT_PKG_DISTFMTS variable, which may be present in the definitions file (see Chapter 9, The definitions script). If no value is given, then the default is taken, tar.gz.

14.1. Supported formats

Several formats may be given in the BT_PKG_DISTFMTS variable, separated by whitespaces. The following list shows all of them, together with their identificative string:

tar.bz2 or tbz

A tar archive compressed with the bzip2 utility.

tar.gz or tgz

A tar archive compressed with the gzip utility.

zip

A zip compressed archive.



[12] Support for binary archives may be added in a future.