MixDown

MixDown is a meta-build tool that makes it easier to build software packages that have multiple dependencies. It uses a simple input file format to describe package information, and uses a series of heuristics to automatically generate an initial problem input file from a collection of tar, zip files, or download URLs.

MixDown supports the following targets:

• Local tarballs and zipfiles (e.g., /tmp/foo-1.2.3.tar.gz)
• Download URLs for tarballs and zipfiles (e.g., http://www.example.com/download/foo-1.2.3.tar.gz)
• Local directories that contain the source code to be built (e.g., /tmp/foo-1.2.3/)
• Subversion repositories
• Mercurial (hg) repositories
• Git repositories

Examples

Subversion

Here's how you would use MixDown to build subversion. First, create an initial MixDown build file using information from the source tarballs of subversion and its dependencies (the order doesn't matter):

MixDown --import \
http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.6.12.tar.bz2 \
http://www.eng.lsu.edu/mirrors/apache/apr/apr-1.3.12.tar.bz2 \
http://www.eng.lsu.edu/mirrors/apache/apr/apr-util-1.3.11.tar.bz2 \
http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.29.5.tar.gz \
http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-autoconf-3070500.tar.gz

This will create a MixDown build file called subversion-1.6.12.md.

Next, execute the build:

MixDown subversion-1.6.12.md

Git

Here's how you can use MixDown to build Git.

 MixDown --import \
 http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.5.1.tar.bz2

This will create a MixDown build file called git-1.7.5.1.md.

Next, execute the build. By default, git will try to install itself in /usr/local, but this can be overridden with the -p flag. Here we install it into ./testPrefix instead.

 MixDown git-1.7.5.1.md -ptestPrefix

Usage

Import Mode: 
    Example Usage: MixDown --import foo.tar.gz http://path/to/bar

    Required:
    --import                  Toggle Import mode
    <package location list>   Space delimited list of package locations

Build Mode (Default): 
    Example Usage: MixDown foo.md

    Required:
    <path to .md file>   Path to MixDown project file

    Optional:
    -p<path>      Override prefix directory
    -b<path>      Override build directory
    -o<path>      Override download directory
    -l<logger>    Override default logger (Console, File, Html)
    -k            Keeps previously existing MixDown directories

Clean Mode: 
    Example Usage: MixDown --clean foo.md

    Required:
    --clean              Toggle Clean mode
    <path to .md file>   Path to MixDown project file

    Optional:
    -b<path>      Override build directory
    -o<path>      Override download directory
    -l<logger>    Override default logger (Console, File, Html)

Custom Build Mode:
    1. Create a .md file manually with rules for Name, Path and Build.
    2. The order of steps in the .md file will be respected while processing.
    3. In the Build rule, add the necessary steps before running the make.
    4. Write custom methods in a new file called mySteps.py which may be used to patch auto-generated files.
    5. Use MixDown in Build Mode.

Sample .md file:
    Name: <Name of Project>
    Path: <Path of Project> 
    Patch: <METHOD_CALL>
    Config: <Commands to be executed>; ./configure
    Build: <Commands to be executed>; make
    Install: <Commands to be executed>; make install


Default Directories:
Builds:       mdBuild/
Downloads:    mdDownload/
Logs:         mdLogFiles/