Cross Linux Uniform Mutual Packager

Clump is a tool for generating both RPM and Debian packages from a single distro-agnostic source. Clump reads a YAML file similar to RPM spec files and Debian control files but enables, in a uniform way, functionality found in both package managers.

It supports a lowest common denominator of functionality that is mutually supported on both Debian and RPM based package management systems.

Clump is not intended for packages that take advantage of all the distro-specific features that Debian and RPM package managers offer. Instead clump is intended for simple packages that only use common functionality mutually supported in both package managers.

Examples

The clump.yaml in this repository is an example, clump can package itself using clump. Other examples can be found in the clump-examples repository.

Notable Features

Automatic RPM file list generation

Clump will automatically deduce a "files list" for an RPM package by looking at what gets install and then removing paths owned by any required packages and the "filesystem" package.

Uniform specification for both RPM and Debian packages

Data needed for generating RPM and Debian source packages are specified in a uniform way inside a clump.yaml file. In particular:

• RPM packages can declare a user and group for installed files and directories. Debian in contrast requires post-installation script to call chown on installed paths. Clump allows a declaration of user and group ownership within clump.yaml of installed paths and clump will generate appropriate RPM or Debian post-instalation scripts as appropriate.

• Changelogs for Debian and RPM in their respective formats, get generated by clump from the YAML change log inside clump.yaml.

Package specification that can be parsed by other applications

Rather than procedural code such as Python and shell scripts, a clump.yaml file can be parsed as YAML by other applications. For instance, a setup.py script can read a clump.yaml file to determine package name and version. This is in fact how the setup.py script for clump itself works.

Automatic source download

Sources can get automatically downloaded when accompanied by checksums.

Caveats

Clump is experimental at this stage and in use on:

• CentOS 7
• Amazon Linux 2014.09
• Ubuntu 14.04

Clump generates packages for the distribution it is being run on. For multiple packages for muliple distributions you need to run clump on those multiple distributions.

Binary RPM Packages

An RPM package named clump is built by Castedo and found in the following repositories:

• CentOS/RHEL 7: http://dist.brokertron.com/repo/centos/7/brokertron.repo
• Amazon Linux 2014.09: http://dist.brokertron.com/repo/amzn/2014.09/brokertron.repo

Place those .repo files in your /etc/yum.repos.d/ and do sudo yum install clump.

Or you can git clone this repository and run clump/test/clump.sh.

Related Projects

• Effing Package Management
• Open Build Service
• Alien
• pkgwrite