Megh's Blog

Creating an RPM package for a PHP PEAR module

I am participating in Google Code In 2014 and two of my tasks were based on RPM packaging for Fedora. The first was packaging PhalconPHP for Fedora while the second was packaging CakePHP. Phalcon is an C extension while Cake is a PEAR/Composer extension.

I will discuss the easier of the two, Cake as it was a PEAR package.

So first of all, you need to learn some RPM Packaging Basics. This link briefly introduces us to the necessary tools and their setup. But the above link does not introduce us to Copr which may be used to distribute and even build our RPMS on different platforms (we can use it as a sort of substitute for Koji or Mock).

Then I recommend that you read [PHP Packaging wiki](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:

The Channel package #

So lets say we have identified the PEAR channel (pear.example.org) and it is not the standard PEAR channel. So we need to create a CHANNEL package.

So lets create the SPEC file :

%{!?__pear: %{expand: %%global __pear %{_bindir}/pear}}
%global pear_channel pear.example.org
%global pear_channel_name example
Name:           php-channel-%{pear_channel_name}
# Use REST version
Version:        1.3
Release:        1%{?dist}
Summary:        Adds %{pear_channel_name} channel to PEAR

Group:          Development/Languages
License:        MIT
URL:            http://%{pear_channel}
Source0:        http://%{pear_channel}/channel.xml
BuildRoot:      %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)

BuildArch:      noarch
BuildRequires:  php-pear >= 1:1.4.9-1.2
Requires:       php-common >= 5.1.4
Requires:       php-pear(PEAR)
Requires(post): %{__pear}
Requires(postun): %{__pear}
Provides:       php-channel(%{pear_channel})

%description
This package adds the %{pear_channel_name} channel which allows PEAR packages
from this channel to be installed.

%prep
%setup -q -c -T


%build
# Empty build section, nothing to build


%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{pear_xmldir}
install -pm 644 %{SOURCE0} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{pear_xmldir}/%{name}.xml


%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT


%post
if [ $1 -eq  1 ] ; then
   %{__pear} channel-add %{pear_xmldir}/%{name}.xml > /dev/null || :
else
   %{__pear} channel-update %{pear_xmldir}/%{name}.xml > /dev/null ||:
fi


%postun
if [ $1 -eq 0 ] ; then
   %{__pear} channel-delete %{pear_channel} > /dev/null || :
fi


%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%{pear_xmldir}/%{name}.xml


%changelog
* Mon Dec 15 2014 Megh Parikh <meghprkh@gmail.com> 1.3-1
- Initial Release.

As you can see you just need to edit a few lines (lines 2,3) to update the channel name and URL and the last lines for proper changelogs.

Now you can build this spec using the rpmbuild command.

Install the generated RPM on your system (provided the build is successful).

The PEAR Package #

Now lets head on to creating the actual SPEC file of the RPM package.

%global pear_name example
%global pear_channel pear.example.org
URL:            http://%{pear_channel}/package/%{pear_name}
Source0:        http://%{pear_channel}/get/%{pear_name}-%{version}.tgz
BuildRequires:  php-channel(%{pear_channel})
Requires:       php-channel(%{pear_channel})

The Copr Build System #

Lets say you have Fedora 20 on your system but you also want to build it for other Fedora and EPEL versions and also make the installation simpler for the end user. So the right tool you need to use is the Copr Build System.