Yes, never use your top level home directory to build these packages. You will lose stuff in a hury; orI should say, you will lose your place before you know it and not be able to find the files that the build process created. I do like Cal suggested. I have a directory called ~/abs and under that I have one called aur for packages I have brought down from AUR and I haven't modified - just built to use or possibly packages I'm maintaining for the AUR. I also have another one for testing such as when I apply patches to a git orca tree or if/when I might make my own changes to a program. So then under each of these directories, I have the directory for each package. Within the package directory, I 'cd into this directory and then do the 'makepkg' to build the package. Now to answer your questions, the variables $STARTDIR points to the top level directory of your package and is really not being used much anymore. Instead, we usually will use symbols like $SRCDIR and $PKGDIR; these symbols are pretty much self describing. $SRCDIR will go into a directory called src right under the directory containing your PKGBUILD file. the $PKGDIR will be called pkg and also lives in the same directory as your PKGBUILD. in the pkg directory, is where the installation environment for your package will go when it builds. This is very revealing and can help you verify that your build script is properly configuring things and placing objects in the right folders. I find it fun to verify. The 'makepkg' step should download the source tarball to the main package directory but untar the thing into the src folder underneith. What I have done on some occasions, is to temperarily insert an 'exit' statement in the PKGBUILD right after the download or even after the compile process so I can look around to be sure things aren't going too far south. This is especially the case if I am build a brand new PKGBUILD for something. Hope this all helps. On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 10:55:40PM -0500, Kyle wrote: > Your source and built binary package will be put into subdirectories > under the directory where your PKGBUILD file is. The sources are put > into ./src and the binary package is in ./pkg. It looks like these > settings can be overridden in /etc/makepkg.conf. You probably should > use a directory to store your PKGBUILD files other than your home > directory. Most of the time, you will want a package build > directory, and each PKGBUILD file should be in a subdirectory under > the one you selected for all your package builds. Example: I have my > package builds in ~/build. Under that is a subdirectory for each > PKGBUILD I want to build, e.g. ~/build/svox-pico-git/, where I have > my PKGBUILD file for that package, which I hope to build as soon as > I figure out why I get very strange errors only when I use makepkg > to build it. :) Using this clean directory structure for each > package makes it much easier to find the sources for each package > and to apply your patches. I've never tried just putting PKGBUILD in > my home directory and building it there to see what would happen, > but it can't be easy to sort out if something goes wrong. Hope this > helps a litttle, as I'm lacking in experience myself. > ~Kyle > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup