Spack

Software Screenshot:
Spack
Software Details:
Version: 3.12
Upload Date: 17 Feb 15
Developer: Sebastien Boillod
Distribution Type: Freeware
Downloads: 34

Rating: 3.0/5 (Total Votes: 2)

Spack is an open source command-line software that provides a simple, yet complete package generator especially designed for the popular and powerful Slackware Linux operating system, as well as for any other Slackware derivative.

A standalone package management system for Slackware

In other words, Spack is a standalone package manager that features its own CPIO-based package format, while still being fully compatible with the default package management system of Slackware Linux.

The project has been originally designed for lazy Slackware users who hate writing SlackBuilds, helping them to easily and quickly generate packages for their distribution, as well as to effortlessly install these packages.

In order to make decent packages for Slackware Linux, Spack aims to drastically shrink the code you are required to write, and it manages all of the redundant tasks that are relative to the Slackware packaging policy.

Getting started with Spack

Installing Spack in your Slackware distribution is quite easy, as you’ll have to download the latest version from its official website (see link at the end of the article) or via Softoware using the dedicated download button above.

Save the archive somewhere on your computer, preferably your Home directory, unpack it with any archive manager utility, open a terminal emulator and navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/spack-3.12).

Then, run the ‘./configure’ command to configure the program for your Slackware distribution, followed by the ‘make’ command to install it, as no compilation is required. The program comes with various command-line options that can be viewed at a glance by running the ‘spack --help’ command in a terminal emulator.

At the moment, it has been successfully tested with the latest stable version of the Slackware Linux distribution. It is fully compatible with both 64-bit and 32-bit hardware architectures.

What is new in this release:

  • spackcook: added a "beep" option, to alert the user when the script is stopped (updated spackcook.8)
  • spackcook: honor the symlink-provided profile request.

What is new in version 3.11:

  • With two or three releases per year during the last two years, I think we can say the project is already almost frozen. So, maybe a jump to a new branch would be now somewhat artificial, wouldn't it? That's how it seems to me, and that's why we will finally stick with this nicely sleepy branch 3, where there remains in my todo a very little work to complete, not to say nothing.
  • The only real task to plan or not is a potential modification of the UI, in order to remake it in the BSD/POSIX fashion I like very much: "spackfoo -a -b -c /dir" could be as well written "spackfoo -abc/dir" and the long options would be replaced with new short ones. It's not such a big work to complete, but I really don't know if it worth coding and disturbing you. So, if whereas me you've a strong opinion about this project, let me now: sbb-AT-tuxfamily.org.
  • spackadd: escape the slashes so the input won't clash with the AWK syntax when used as a pattern.
  • spackcook: drop the code keeping the compatibility with the branch 2 of the project (check your recipes using the updated DEPRECATED file) and add some trivial improvments.
  • spackcook: make the find expressions POSIX in fixmod() and leave alone the stuff which is not regular file nor directory.

What is new in version 3.10:

  • spackcook: improve the routine to guess the name, version and build number of the package. The default for the package name's from now on the one of the source directory.
  • spackpkg: improve the outputs by sorting the files before archiving them. (thanks to appzer0 for the suggestion)

What is new in version 3.9:

  • Spacklist can list and display the installed post-install scripts.
  • Several bugs were also fixed in spackadd and spackcook, which no longer set any defaults for the CC flags in order to prevent breakages on non-x86 platforms.

What is new in version 3.8:

  • This version fixes two little bugs. The first caused spackedit to fail when a package was given with a relative path. The other caused spackfind to not match the absolute paths when "^" was omitted in the beginning of the requests.

What is new in version 3.4:

  • The spacktidy UI and code were revised and slightly improved, and the related documentation was fixed.
  • Moreover, it can now perform case insensitive searches when the new "MATCHCASE" option is set to 0.
  • The spackcook command's --recipe option was improved.

What is new in version 3.2:

  • This version replaces the "fmt" command used in spackdesc by POSIX awk, provides a better UI for this command, and make it generate totally Slackware-like output.
  • It also more properly centralizes the spack-related configuration files into the "/spack" sub-directory.

What is new in version 3.1:

  • spackfind: better code, which wipes out all the non POSIX options for the commands described by the standard. It is a bit faster than the old one, uses POSIX Extended Regex Expressions for search patterns, and do not need anymore to write any intermediate file on the disk.
  • spackindex: mostly rewritten to be much more flexible. You can from now on easily update or remove the entries, and it ensures the content is properly sorted. The support for parsing and storing the native Spack package format was also added. To enjoy this, you will though have to remake or convert the existing data basis, see the DEPRECATED file for further details.

What is new in version 3.0:

  • In this release, the CPIO-based package format is definitively adopted as the native Spack's package format.
  • This allows the project to be a complete and standalone package manager instead of being just a package generator.
  • Nevertheless, it is still possible to use it in this way and to generate traditional Slackware packages.

Requirements:

  • Slackware

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