depmake

depmake

depmake is a collection of bash functions and conventions for creating applications that can bundle all their code and dependencies inside a tar file. The tar can be used to extract and run your app on any system (of the same kernel / architecture).

depmake has a certain overlap with tools such as chef and puppet, but only contains features required to create deployable archives.

depmake also has a certain overlap with package managers such as apt and pacman, but is yet again laser focused on creating deployable archives.

However, simple does not mean easy. depmake is a tool that allows you to create simple deployment systems at the cost of more initial work.

Overview

A typical depmake project allows you to check out a fresh copy of your project, then:

cd my-project
source my-config.sh
cd deps && make

This will kick off a process in which all your dependencies are built and installed into a folder called stack. Your my-config.sh then contains some code like this:

ROOT_DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
export STACK_DIR="${ROOT_DIR}/stack"

export ORIGINAL_PATH=${ORIGINAL_PATH:-$PATH}
export PATH="${ORIGINAL_PATH}:${STACK_DIR}/bin"
export CPPFLAGS="-I${STACK_DIR}/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L${STACK_DIR}/lib"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${STACK_DIR}/lib"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="${STACK_DIR}/lib/pkgconfig"

This makes sure that in addition to the usual paths your systems looks for binaries, shared libraries, etc., it will also consider the stuff insided of the stack folder.

So effectively this creates a virtual environment that is activated by sourcing a bash file, and de-activated by starting a new shell session.