slkbuild is a script inspired by makepkg from Arch which greatly simplifies the package building process in Slackware and derivatives. It parses an easy to create SLKBUILD meta-file and from that creates a conventional build script that follows all of the slackware packaging standards that can be run on its own.
The advantage of using slkbuild is that it ensures package uniformity and allows for an easy to edit meta-file in the event that one might require customization or might need to update the script for new releases. It also makes the buid process much quicker as downâloading the source, untarring, gzipping man and info pages, stripping binaries, making sure on graphical applications that the menu entry is compliant as well as a host of other things are taken care of automatically freeing up time that would otherwise be consumed by these redundant tasks.
slkbuild is being used extensively in Salix, a Slackware-based distribution that is fully backwards compatible with it, and hundreds of packages have already been created with its help.
Please note root access is required. Use of fakeroot for running slkbuild is advised. Read the slkbuild(8) and SLKBUILD(5) man pages after installation for more details on this tool.
The latest stable version of slkbuild is 0.9.0:
You can clone the latest code from github with:
git://github.com/gapan/slkbuild.git
Or you can visit the github project page.
George Vlahavas (vlahavas~at~gmail~dot~com)