Ruby package guidelines#

This document covers standards and guidelines on writing PKGBUILDs for software that uses ruby.

Package naming#

For libraries, use ruby-$_name (where $_name is the upstream project name). For applications, use the project name (without the ruby- prefix) and optionally add ruby-$_name to provides.

Build and tests#

Ruby packages should be built from upstream sources as this provides a transparent chain of trust for the build. To ensure integration with the existing set of Ruby packages, it is expected to run tests using ruby-rake or ruby-rspec.

ℹ️ Note

To detect dependency changes in between releases of a project, have a close look at the .gemspec or Gemfile upon update.

Template#

prepare() {
  cd "${_name}-${pkgver}"

  # update gemspec/Gemfile to allow newer version of the dependencies
  sed --in-place --regexp-extended 's|~>|>=|g' "${_name}.gemspec"
}

build() {
  cd "${_name}-${pkgver}"

  local _gemdir="$(gem env gemdir)"

  gem build "${_name}.gemspec"

  gem install \
    --local \
    --verbose \
    --ignore-dependencies \
    --build-root "tmp_install" \
    "${_name}-${pkgver}.gem"
}

check() {
  cd "${_name}-${pkgver}"

  local _gemdir="$(gem env gemdir)"

  GEM_HOME="tmp_install/${_gemdir}" rake test
}

package() {
  cd "${_name}-${pkgver}"

  cp --archive --verbose tmp_install/* "${pkgdir}"

  install --verbose -D --mode=0644 LICENSE --target-directory "${pkgdir}/usr/share/licenses/${pkgname}"
  install --verbose -D --mode=0644 *.md --target-directory "${pkgdir}/usr/share/doc/${pkgname}"
}

Tips and tricks#

The gem is deriving the files to add with “git ls-files”#

In this case you can add the following sed command to the prepare() function:

# we don't build from a git checkout
sed --in-place --regexp-extended 's|git ls-files|find . -type f -not -path "*/\.git/*"|' "${_name}.gemspec"

The upstream project is using “rspec” to run tests#

In this case you can replace the code line in the check() function with the following:

GEM_HOME="tmp_install/${_gemdir}" rspec