Php/Pecl

package an php-extension

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How to package PHP extensions by yourself September 25th, 2008 | by Guillaume Plessis |

I often receive emails telling me that Dotdeb is a great tool, but that some useful packages are missing, such as some PECL extensions. I wish I could maintain many and many packages, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for the Dotdeb’s overall quality and for my free time ;) Sorry for that.

Then, this article will show you how to build packages from your favorite PECL extensions in a strict Debian way, using the dh-make-php package.

Imagine we want to package the Fileinfo extension for PHP5…

First, install all the needed packages (libmagic-dev is only needed here to build Fileinfo) :

1. apt-get install dh-make-php php5-dev build-essential libmagic-dev

Then, export some needed environment variables, download the package

1. export DEBFULLNAME="Guillaume Plessis"
2. export DEBEMAIL="gui@php.net"
3. pecl download fileinfo

downloading Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz ... Starting to download Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz (5,835 bytes) .....done: 5,835 bytes File /tmp/Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz downloaded

Ok, let’s summon the magical dh-make-pecl command with the appropriate arguments :

1. dh-make-pecl --only 5 Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz

Creating debian source package: php-fileinfo-1.0.4 Upstream is: Ilia Alshanetsky Guessing Maintainer: Guillaume Plessis

No error message… Great! dh-make-pecl did its job, e.g. unarchived the tarball and created the php-fileinfo-1.0.4/debian/ subdirectory that contains all the packaging stuff. “–only 5” restricts the building process to PHP5 packages (PHP4 is obsolete!)

Let’s build the package!

1. cd php-fileinfo-1.0.4/
2. ./debian/rules binary

xsltproc --nonet --novalid debian/changelog.xsl package.xml > debian/Changelog touch build-stamp dh_testdir ... dh_md5sums dh_builddeb dpkg-deb: building package `php5-fileinfo' in `../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb'.

That’s it! Let’s take a look at the content of the package…

1. dpkg -c ../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb

drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/ -rw-r--r-- root/root 10296 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/fileinfo.so drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/ -rw-r--r-- root/root 202 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/README.Debian -rw-r--r-- root/root 26 2004-02-13 01:06 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/CREDITS -rw-r--r-- root/root 3466 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/copyright -rw-r--r-- root/root 159 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/changelog.Debian.gz -rw-r--r-- root/root 865 2005-11-24 23:07 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/fileinfo.php -rw-r--r-- root/root 149 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/changelog.gz

and its metadata :

1. dpkg -I ../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb

new debian package, version 2.0.
size 12740 bytes: control archive= 4848 bytes.
    940 bytes,    31 lines   *  config               #!/bin/sh
    607 bytes,    20 lines      control
    522 bytes,     7 lines      md5sums
   1218 bytes,    58 lines   *  postinst             #!/bin/sh
    206 bytes,     8 lines   *  postrm               #!/bin/sh
   1773 bytes,    63 lines   *  prerm                #!/bin/sh
   8758 bytes,    67 lines      templates
Package: php5-fileinfo
Version: 1.0.4-1
Section: web
Priority: optional
Architecture: i386
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6), libmagic1, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, php5 | php5-cli
Installed-Size: 100
Maintainer: Guillaume Plessis
Source: php-fileinfo
Description: Fileinfo module for PHP 5
 libmagic bindings
 .
 This extension allows retrieval of information regarding vast
 majority of file.
 This information may include dimensions, quality, length etc...
 .
 Additionally it can also be used to retrieve the mime type for a
 particular
 file and for text files proper language encoding.
 .

Great job! Now install the package and enjoy…

For more information and specific needs, take a look at “dh-make-pecl” and “man dh-make-pecl“.