Creating Packages

A package is a recipe in packages/<name>/. Every recipe is a declarative bpm.toml, built into a native .bpm by tools/build-bpm-pkg.sh (which drives bpmbuild in an ephemeral Arch container). The old PKGBUILD / makepkg path has been fully retired.

Anatomy of a bpm.toml recipe

# packages/hello/bpm.toml
[package]
name     = "hello"
version  = "2.12.1"
release  = 1
summary  = "GNU Hello — example package"
license  = ["GPL-3.0-or-later"]
arch     = ["x86_64"]
depends     = ["glibc"]            # runtime — Blueberry package names
makedepends = ["make", "gcc"]     # build-only — pulled from Arch in the container
enable      = ["hello.service"]   # optional: systemd units to enable on install

[[source]]
url    = "https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.12.1.tar.gz"
sha256 = "..."                     # pin the source (or "SKIP")

[steps]
build = '''
cd "$name-$version"
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
'''
package = '''
cd "$name-$version"
make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
'''

The shell steps get $name $version $release $arch $pkgdir. Build it:

ENGINE=podman tools/build-bpm-pkg.sh ../out hello
# → ../out/hello-2.12.1-1-x86_64.bpm
bpm install ../out/hello-2.12.1-1-x86_64.bpm

Key rules:

• depends are runtime deps and must be Blueberry package names (resolved

from our mirror at install). makedepends are build-only and are pulled from Arch inside the throwaway build container.

• Pin sha256 per [[source]] for reproducibility. For vendor binaries that

should always fetch "latest," SKIP is acceptable.

• Install into $pkgdir with a /usr prefix.

build-bpm-pkg.sh:

• spins up archlinux:latest, installs base-devel + the recipe's makedepends,
• runs bpmbuild as a non-root builder with a fixed SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH,
• writes the .bpm to your out-dir,
• is idempotent — a package whose .bpm is newer than its bpm.toml is

skipped.

Patterns that come up a lot

• GCC 16 strictness. The build container ships GCC 16. Old K&R / C23 code

often needs -std=gnu17; some builds need -Werror=format-security stripped from CFLAGS.

• CFLAGS via ENV, not make args. Pass overrides through the environment

(export CFLAGS=...) rather than make CFLAGS=..., which can clobber a package's own -I include paths.

• Extraction dir vs $name-$version. GitLab/GitHub archive tarballs may

extract to a differently-named directory (e.g. foo-v1.2); cd into the real directory in your steps.

• Autotools from a VCS archive. A git-archive tarball often ships no

configure; run ./autogen.sh first (add autoconf automake libtool gettext to makedepends).

• Arch name mismatches. A Blueberry package name may differ from Arch's; use

provides = [...] and reference the Arch name where a build needs it.

Submitting a recipe

Open a pull request adding packages/<name>/. See Contributing.