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Functionality and Customization of the Meilix Metapackage meilix-default-settings

Post author:meets2tarun
Post published:September 4, 2017
Post category:FOSSASIA GSoC Meilix
Post comments:0 Comments

Meilix has is made of build file and metapackages. Build file is responsible for executing commands and successfully implementing the work of metapackages.

Metapackages in Meilix
Name of metapackages used in Meilix are: meilix-artwork, meilix-default-settings.

meilix-default-settings

meilix-default-settings have 3 major folders debian, etc and usr and a Makefile. We are only concerned with etc and usr folder here.
etc and usr folders are folders in which if changes are made that can be seen the ISO. One can assume this as two folders present in the root folder of a Linux Distro.

Its directory is like this:

meilix-artwork

meilix-artwork has 1 main folder named as usr which contain share folder in which plymouth configuration is made. One can make changes here and it will directly seen in the Linux Distro.

Its directory looks like this:

How these meta packages actually work?
To get the answer one has to jump into the debian folder of any of the metapackage. It contains a control file. This contains information of the metapackages.

Source: meilix-default-settings
Section: x11
Priority: extra
Maintainer: meilix <vanhonit@gmail.com>
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 8.0.0)
Standards-Version: 3.9.2
Homepage: http://mbm.vn

Package: meilix-default-settings
Architecture: all
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
Description: default settings for meilix
 Various system settings tailored for meilix.

One can update the metapackage from here and tweak with its depends. One come to know about the maintainer of the metapackage which can contacted in case of any issue. We can also know for which architecture this metapackage is made and about its description.
The whole debian does the work but after making any changes in the metapackage, it needs to be rebuild which is performed by debuild.sh. This is how a metapackages in Meilix works.

References:
Linux Metapackages – Matthartley from linux.com
Creating a Metapackage – Ajmitch from askubuntu.com

Debuilding the meilix-default-settings Metapackage

Post author:meets2tarun
Post published:September 1, 2017
Post category:FOSSASIA GSoC Meilix
Post comments:0 Comments

In the Meilix code repository you find a metapackage named meilix-default-settings which contains custom settings in directories as debian, etc, and user. In these directories one can make changes to make them be included in the build ISO. As Meilix runs on Debian we package our custom user settings in a Debian package to be installed along all the other software packages. The process and utility to make a Debian package is called debuild.

Directories in the meilix-default-settings:

What is debuilding?

It’s Debian slang for “making a deb package” and that stirred quite some confusion in our communications. Debuild is actually a rebuilding of the metapackage. But as to rebuild the Debian package you usually type debuild -uc -us therefore I stick to the language

Suppose someone has edited a configuration file in the metapackage according to its desires to achieve a specific result in the ISO it won’t get in unless he rebuilds the metapackage.He has not only to edit the metapackage but also to rebuild it to get the desired output in the ISO. To make the process automated, we have made a tiny script which will debuild the metapackages during each and every build, we only need to modify the metapackage.

Actually the first meilix-default-settings folder is the only metapackage and inside of it is the sub-metapackage which is responsible to get the changes applied in the ISO. To see a change in the ISO, we only need to edit the meilix-default-settings usr or etc folder in the first layer. Then, we need to debuild the metapackages.

Code-Base:

This file is present here

1. #!/bin/bash
2. rm meilix-default-settings_*                                    
3. cd meilix-default-settings                                      
4. debuild -uc -us

Let’s go through the whole code base line by line:
Line 2 deletes the previous meilix-default-settings binary packages.
Line 3 in this we changed our directory to the metapackage folder that is of our concern.
Line 4 is the most important line, it builds the whole metapackage and brings back all the binary packages and metapackages after making the desired changes.

Follow the example below to know that actually how it works:

This pull request is responsible to turn off system sounds by default in the generated ISO. Pull Requests files in which I only edited the this file and rest of the files get changes in the process of debuilding the metapackage (ignore .travis.yml file).

References:
Required files under debian directory
Debian directory guideline