CowBuilder + CCache

I'm a GetDeb contributor, building Ubuntu packages of new applications. The build system I use is CowBuilder (pbuilder/cowdancer) plus CCache to speedup the process.

Following is a simple guide to setup such an environment on an Ubuntu system.

1. Install packages:

   sudo apt-get install cowdancer ccache

2. Edit ~/.pbuilderrc :

   ## Overrides /etc/pbuilderrc
   
   # Default distribution
   DISTRIBUTION=feisty
   COMPONENTS="main restricted universe multiverse"
   
   # Repositories
   MIRRORSITE=http://br.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
   
   # Bash prompt inside pbuilder
   export debian_chroot="pbuild$$"
   
   # Faster dependency resolution
   PBUILDERSATISFYDEPENDSCMD="/usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-satisfydepends-gdebi"
   
   # CCache setup
   export CCACHE_DIR="/var/cache/pbuilder/ccache"
   export PATH="/usr/lib/ccache:${PATH}"
   
   EXTRAPACKAGES=ccache
   BINDMOUNTS="${CCACHE_DIR}"

3. Create CCache directory (user 1234 is default inside cowbuilder):

   sudo mkdir /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache
   sudo chown 1234 /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache

4. Create the build environment:

   sudo cowbuilder --create --distribution feisty

After the (rather long) download and install procedure you can start compiling your own packages like this:

sudo cowbuilder --build flv2mpeg4_0+svn3-1~getdeb1.dsc

The resulting package can be found in /var/cache/pbuilder/result/