One question that I see over and over again in comp.sys.hp.hpux is "How do I create a software depot?"  The answer is "there are several ways" (hardly surprising; this is a UNIX system after all).

This is the first revision of this document.  It contains the templates that I use for adding products to the software depots that I maintain. I you have any corrections or suggestions, I would appreciate them.

Note:  the "#" or "%" that precedes each line is the shell prompt (I use tcsh).  The "#" signifies the root user; "%" is an ordinary user.

Swpackage can create an unregistered depot. It's primarily used to package up software products for later installation by swinstall. (We'll look at that process later.)

    # swpackage -s /depot/psf_files/procmail.psf \
        -d /home/bass/depot

"-s" specifies the source, "procmail.psf", a Product Specification File, which tells swpackage how to package up the product. (We'll talk about PSF files a little later.)

"-d" specifies the destination, "/home/bass/depot", a depot subdirectory. The destination does not have to exist. Swpackage will create it for you. The destination could also have been a file or tape. (See the section Creating Depot Files or Tapes for details.)

swcopy

If you have a bunch of products or filesets that you want to group together into a new or existing depot (a collection of patches, for example), use swcopy. The destination depot does not have to exist; swcopy will create it for you if it doesn't. For example:

    # swcopy -s /home/bass/depot procmail @ /tmp/depot

"-s" specifies the source depot, "/home/bass/depot". It could be a depot file, directory, tape device or mounted CD-ROM.

"procmail" is the name of the product or fileset to copy.

"@" specifies the destination depot, "/tmp/depot". (Yes, I think they should have used "-d" for destination.)

Note that the newly-created depot directory is unregistered. That means we can't locate it with:

    % swlist -l depot

Which would list all the available depots on this system.

However, we can still list the depot's contents with swlist, if we tell him where the depot is:

    % swlist -s /home/bass/depot

If you want to register the depot, use the swreg command:

    # swreg -l depot /home/bass/depot

    # swcopy -s SOURCE_DEPOT SELECTION @ DESTINATION_DEPOT

The SOURCE_DEPOT could be a depot file, directory, tape device or mounted CD-ROM. It has to be a fully-rooted path; this is, start with a "/".

SELECTION is the name of the software selection (the product or fileset) to copy. To copy them all, use "\*" as the selection.

The DESTINATION_DEPOT also has to be fully-rooted.

How do you know what the software selection's name is? For patches, it's usually the name of the path. Use the swlist command to find out, like so:

    % swlist -s <depot>

For the purpose of this cookbook, I'll just do the basics: gathering up the bits and putting them in the depot.

As we saw in Method A, the basic swpackage command is:

    # swpackage -s PSF_FILE @ DEPOT

PSF_FILE is the Product Specification File, and DEPOT is the destination.

I recommend using the "-p" flag to preview the process, and fix any errors in the PSF, before actually writing anything into the depot.

If a product only has a few files -- maybe an executable or two, a few man pages and maybe a library file -- I build it to reside in /usr/contrib/bin, /usr/contrib/man/man1 and /usr/contrib/lib, respectively. For Gnu-configured software, this usually means setting the --prefix to /usr/contrib.

On the other hand, if this is a major software package -- like Emacs or TCL, I build it with the --prefix set to /opt/PACKAGE_NAME. This keeps it all together in one place, and simplifies the PSF file. The Post-Install script adds the bin directory to the contents of /etc/PATH, which you can source in your .cshrc.

Appendix 1 contains the PSF I use for packaging software products that will be swinstalled into /usr/contrib.

Appendicies 2, 3 and 4 are the PSF and post-install and post-remove scripts for packaging products to be installed in /opt.

To make a product available to swinstall on either an HPUX-10 or -11 system, use the values below for these PSF directives:

    architecture S700/S800_HPUX_10/11
    os_release ?.10.*|?.11.*

To force swinstall to allow HPUX-10 software to be installed on HPUX-11, Add the "-x allow_incompatible=true" argument to the command line.

    # swpackage -d /tmp/procmail.depot -x target_type=tape \
        -s /home/bass/depot procmail

The addition of the "-x target_type=tape" forces swpackage to write the depot sequentially to the tape (or file) instead of creating a distribution directory.

To create a tape, substitute the file name given to the "-d" flag with the tape device:

    # swpackage -d /dev/rmt/0m -x target_type=tape \
        -s /home/bass/depot procmail

The "-d" argument may also be a pipe to a UNIX command, like so:

    # swpackage -d "| gzip -c > /tmp/procmail.depot.gz" \
        -x target_type=tape ...

What is the product name of the C compiler? Of the Fortran compiler?

    % swlist -l product -l subproduct -s /cdrom | grep -i compiler
    # C-ANSI-C    B.10.20.00     HP C/ANSI C Compiler

The answer is C-ANSI-C.

    % swlist -l product -l subproduct -s /cdrom | grep -i fortran
    # FORTRAN          B.10.20.00     FORTRAN Programming 
      FORTRAN.Demos            FORTRAN Guide, Reference and Floating Point Guide 
      FORTRAN.Development      FORTRAN Programming 
      FORTRAN.Help             FORTRAN On-line Help 
      FORTRAN.Manuals          FORTRAN Man Pages 
      FORTRAN.ManualsByLang    FORTRAN manuals in foreign languages 
      FORTRAN.Notes            FORTRAN Release notes 
      FORTRAN.Vectorizor       FORTRAN Vectorizor

The answer is FORTRAN.

I swinstalled the C compiler from some depot somewhere. How can I find out which one?

    % swlist -v -l product C-ANSI-C | grep install_source
    install_source         windsock:/depot/s700_hpux_10.20

What product contains pxdb?

    % swlist -l file -s /cdrom | grep pxdb
      C-Plus-Plus.HPCXX: /opt/CC/contrib/Tools/time_pxdb                   
      DebugPrg.DEBUG-PRG: /opt/langtools/bin/pxdb                  
      DebugPrg.DEBUG-PRG: /opt/langtools/lib/nls/msg/C/pxdb.cat                    
      OS-Core.Q4: /usr/contrib/bin/q4pxdb                  
      OS-Core.Q4: /usr/contrib/lib/nls/msg/C/q4pxdb.cat

The answer is DebugPrg.