Building Debian packages

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First, please note that Xenomai is now (2008-03-21) officially included in Debian. This means that the latest version of Xenomai will be directly incorporated into Debian "unstable" which from time to time migrates to the latest "stable" version of Debian. The latter will be stabilized and maintained for a whole Debian stable version lifetime without following the latest versions of "upstream" Xenomai.

Debian's "unstable" version of Xenomai is also tracked with the files in the debian/ directory in the Xenomai source code repository which means that you can also build a Xenomai package from the trunk. (But using the official Debian package is preferred for optimum Debian integration.)

If you want to track the latest Xenomai repository developments that aren't yet in Debian, you should follow the instructions on this page to build a Xenomai Debian package.

To build the package from the Xenomai trunk, simply check out SVN and run: 

svn-buildpackage -us -uc -rfakeroot

This results in the following packages:

  • xenomai-runtime
  • linux-patch-xenomai
  • libxenomai1
  • libxenomai-dev
  • xenomai-doc

For development, linux-patch-xenomai and libxenomai-dev are needed, for "production" systems, you should just need xenomai-runtime und libxenomai1 (together with the self built kernel as described in the following). The package xenomai-doc is optional, of course, but contains important documentation for developers using or developing Xenomai.

The list of supported kernels can be found in the package description of linux-patch-xenomai and under /usr/src/kernel-patches/diffs/xenomai/ in the same package.

Use a suitable kernel tarball and untar in a working directory. You will also need to copy a .config to the new kernel source tree. Note the troublesome config options listed in FAQs and build the kernel package: 

make-kpkg --initrd --added-patches xenomai --config menuconfig binary-arch

One gotcha worth pointing out - Do not use a string containing "xeno" with CONFIG_LOCAL_VERSION or --append-to-version - The post install hook for Debian filter out anything with "xeno".

For latest information, please check the official Debian package page for Xenomai and the Debian development page for Xenomai. There, you will find a direct link to the list of known and open bugs at http://bugs.debian.org/ for the package (Debian packaging specific).

There is also an unofficial, private repository with some sample kernel and Xenomai packages - Only amd64 and i386 packages are provided. To use, add: 

deb http://zathras.tuxcnc.org/xenomai sid main

to /etc/apt/sources.list - The latest builds track the development branch and are tagged with the SVN revision. Built on Debian Etch systems, the packages should run on Ubuntu as well as Debian testing/unstable installs. NOTE: These are unofficial packages compiled by a volunteer and not by a member of the Xenomai nor Debian development team.

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