slacktrack

slacktrack is a tool to assist with building Slackware packages from the < package >.build scripts that can be found in the distribution source tree.

slacktrack can also be used to build packages where Makefile does not honour any DESTDIR type variable, and enables end-users to create packages more easily.

altertrack is also included with slacktrack. This is a version of slacktrack which does not use installwatch, instead it compares the differences in the file system before and after the build.

slacktrack is based on the idea behind CheckInstall and uses installwatch.

What is new in this release:

• This version adds more paths to the default exclusion list, adds a new option to allow overlapping files to exist in newly-created packages, and fixes a small bug with the --delete-overlapping option.

What is new in version 2.09:

• Fixed formatting issues with the man pages exposed by a newer version of "pod2man". Thanks to Branko Grubic for the report and the patches.
• The /var/log/{packages,scripts}/$PACKAGE entries of the unprocessed package contents (just after slacktrack completes execution of the supplied package build script) were incorrect due to slacktrack not handling symlinks when creating these entries - any symlinks were treated treated as files which caused "removepkg" to emit messages such as ".. no longer exists" slacktrack now uses "makepkg" and "installpkg" to correctly create and handle the /var/log/{packages,scripts} entries. Thanks to Roberto for the report and a good detailed explaination.
• Removed /usr/bin/altertrack symlink to /usr/bin/slacktrack. It's been years since altertrack was a separate tool. If you have any scripts still calling "altertrack" -- change them :-)
• When deleting perllocal.pod files, look in /usr/lib & /usr/lib64
• Warn if any files in the newly built package overlap with other packages that are already installed on the system.
• Added -X, --delete-overlapping option. This option deletes any of the overlapping files from the new package. The -Q option now includes the erasing of any overlapping files.
• Do not emit the name of the newly built package when displaying the list of package dependencies.

What is new in version 2.08:

• Updated exclude list: exclude /var/lib/dhcpd from the package contents.

What is new in version 2.06:

• Added /lib/udev/devices to the default path exclusion list. Files in here are generated and maintained by udev and should not be included in packages.

What is new in version 2.05:

• If after removing orphaned *.pyc files, their previous & parent directories become empty, delete the directories.

What is new in version 2.03:

• Updated to handle .tgz, .tbz, .tlz, .txz file extensions Thanks to Patrick Volkerding.
• Renamed --nodeletetgz option in to --nodelete.
• Updated slackdtxt(8)
• Added /usr/lib64 and /lib64 to the list of known library directories. Thanks to Eric Hameleers for reminding me.

What is new in version 2.01:

• This release adds /var/cache to the default list of excludes.

What is new in version 2.00:

• This release no longer uses installwatch to track package installation.
• There are additional options, as well as updates to be more effective with more recent versions of Slackware.