Package Mode

This is the mode to use for authors trying to package a new runtime. In this mode, runtimes can be created, commited, and uploaded.

As of version 0.7, the following options are available :

  -c, --commit TREE BRANCH
                        Commit TREE to BRANCH in REPO
  -i, --initialize DIR  initialize DIR with a good base tree
  -s, --sandbox LOCATION
                        Start a sandbox at LOCATION
  -v, --verbose         enable verbose output
  --repo REPO           Repository to use
  -u, --upload RUNTIME  Upload RUNTIME for publishing.
  --no-gui              Disable GUI
  --gui                 Force enable GUI

--verbose#

Adding -v or --verbose to any command will run MaPS in verbose mode. This prints a lot of extra information which might be helpful to investigate in case things go wrong. Please include output in verbose mode whenever submitting a bug report.

--initialize#

maps package -i <path-to-sandbox>

maps package --initialize <path-to-sandbox>

This option initializes the <path-to-sandbox> directory with the Debian minimal image, as a way to quickly bootstrap the creation of a runtime. The provided path must not exist, or must be an empty directory.

--sandbox#

maps package -s <path-to-sandbox>

maps package --sandbox <path-to-sandbox>

This option launches an interactive sandbox at the provided path. This should ideally be the same path as given to the --initialize option, as, at least bash (and its dependencies) are expected to be found. This is a mutable sandbox, which will later be saved into a runtime. Use this interactive environment to handcraft your (to be) runtime.

A note on fakeroot#

You cannot execute chown, chgrp, chmod etc while inside the runtime. This is standard behaviour of Linux user namespaces. This is not a choice made by MaPS, but a limitation we must live with. This means some operations which in turn call the above routines, like installing packages, or expanding tarballs will fail.

Fakeroot is a Linux program which intercepts calls to such operations, and when instructed, instead of actually performing these operations, does a noop and returns success to the calling code.

As a workaround to the namespace limitation, one can use fakeroot with the env var FAKEROOTDONTTRYCHOWN set to ‘1’, and successfully run otherwise troublesome operations.

export FAKEROOTDONTTRYCHOWN='1'
fakeroot apt install openssh-client

--commit#

maps package -c <path-to-sandbox> runtime-specifier

maps package --commit <path-to-sandbox> runtime-specifier

This option turns your sandbox into a runtime. At this point, no more changes should be made to the runtime, so, please make sure that everything is as you want before you run this step.

The runtime specifier uniquely identifies a runtime to MaPS. It is of the form <software>/<platform>/<version>. The <software> part of the identifier needs to be in the reverse domain name notation. As an example, a valid specifier is org.oscar_system.oscar/x86_64/1.0.0.

--upload#

maps package -u runtime-specifier

maps package --upload runtime-specifier

This option lets you upload your runtime onto the Official MaPS software repository. To do this, you will require an authentication string, with a limited time validity. This is to try to combat spam. Please contact us with some information about who you are and what software you want to upload, and we will provide you this authentication string. Once you have it, you need to provide it to MaPS as an environment variable MTDAUTH, and MaPS will upload your software to our servers. After a manual review, making sure everything is in order, we will make your software available on the Official repository.