Autoproj offers two ways to install software.
The primary intend of autoproj is to allow you to easily install software that needs to be compiled. However, there are also ways to install standard software packages that are offered by your operating system.
Autoproj’s osdeps facility is there for that: handle dependencies between the source packages that it needs to build and packages that are offered by the OS. Example of such packages are: precompiled libraries and applications (e.g. Debian packages on Debian and Ubuntu), RubyGem packages (rubygem is a package management system for Ruby programs) and so on.
Declaring and inspecting dependencies
Dependencies on OS packages are declared the same way than cross-package dependencies are. See this page for more information.
It is important to note that, in case both an osdeps definition and an autoproj package definition exist, the osdeps definition will take precedence – to avoid unnecessarily compile software.
To inspect the OS dependencies on your autoproj installation, simply run
autoproj osdeps --show
This will show the osdeps that are declared for each source package. The reverse is also available with
autoproj osdeps --rshow
which will show, for each needed OS package, which source package needs it.
Fine-tuning the osdeps behaviour
When you bootstrap autoproj, a long question asks you to pick between four osdeps mode. This page will give a bit more detail about each of the modes.
In the ‘all’ mode, autoproj will install both OS packages and RubyGem packages when needed. You should not have to care about what the source packages need, autoproj should install them. If the configuration or compilation of one of the package fails, it will most probably be because the build configuration is missing the relevant OS dependency.
In the ‘os’ mode, only OS packages will automatically be installed. autoproj will completely ignore the RubyGem dependencies, so the build may fail because some of them are not installed.
In the ‘ruby’ mode, only RubyGem packages will automatically be installed. autoproj will completely ignore the OS package dependencies, so the build may fail because some of them are not installed.
In the ‘none’ mode, neither type of packages will be handled by autoproj. Indeed, the build may fail because some of them are not installed.
Behaviour during bootstrapping
Bootstrapping is a kind of a different beast. During bootstrapping, packages must get installed as the goal is to get a functional autoproj.
Therefore, if you choose a different mode than ‘all’, autoproj will list packages that need to be installed in order for the bootstrap to function properly and wait for you to confirm that they are indeed installed.
Behaviour on operating systems (OS) not supported by autoproj
In order to handle the OS packages, autoproj must know how to install them. Operating systems for which autoproj does not have this information are marked as “unsupported” (see this page to extend autoproj for your OS).
On these OS, the ‘all’ and ‘os’ options are obviously not available to you. You will therefore have to install the packages by yourself (see below for a bit of help from autoproj).
Getting a bit of help from autoproj even in modes different than ‘all’
First of all, as presented above, you can inspect osdeps definitions with autoproj osdeps --show and autoproj osdeps --rshow
Another operation of interest is “autoproj osdeps” itself. It will install missing the packages that you required (i.e. only RubyGem packages if you have selected the ‘ruby’ mode) but will also display the missing packages of the other categories, allowing you to install them manually.
Moreover, you can ask autoproj to install packages that you have disabled with the --all, --ruby and --os options:
autoproj osdeps --all
will install all required packages, regardless of the “global” osdeps mode.