1. ROOT for DebianScience

As of July 8, 2008 (or so) ROOT version 5.18 has entered Debian Lenny and is expected to be shipped with the next Debian stable release.

As of 2011, you can find ROOT version 5.28 on the unofficial CERN Debian repository.

Note: the name of the metapackage and source package, at the request of FTP masters, has been changed to root-system. If you only want a minimal ROOT environment you may instead try installing root-system-bin.

2. Port status (25/11/2009): porterbox work

Christian recently had guest access to some of the Debian porter boxes, which meant he could check the packages on many of the Debian supported architectures. The status of this is given below. The work was done on version 5.24.00-2 (not uploaded yet).

Architecture

Build host

Status

Comments

alpha

albeniz.debian.org

Possibly OK

Cintex not supported

amd64

localhost

OK

arm

agnesi.debian.org

Unknown

Machine down

armel

agricola.debian.org

OK

hppa

paer.debian.org

Possibly OK

Machine down

i386

?

Likely OK

ia64

merulo.debian.org

Likely OK

Missing build-depend

mips

mahler.debian.org

Likely OK

Machine down

mipsel

morales.debian.org

Likely OK

Machine down

powerpc

pescetti.debian.org

OK

Cintex not supported

sparc

smetana.debian.org

OK

Cintex not supported

s390

zelenka.debian.org

OK

New to upstream

kfreebsd/i386

io.debian.net

OK

New to upstream

kfreebsd/amd64

asdfasdf.debian.net

Likely OK

New to upstream

(more unofficial ports exists but have not been investigated yet)

See also buildd logs (and possibly here).

3. Porting notes

When porting to a non i386 platform not already supported for Linux, the following points should be considered.

  1. Enable auto-detection in configure. This normally involves figuring out what platform uname -m returns, and then add something like

          linux:<arch>*:*)      arch=linux ;;
  2. If the generic linux arch does not fit the machine (e.g., 64bit word-size, or big-endian, unsupported compiler options, or the like), we need to define a new platform.

    1. Look for a similar architecture, and copy that architectures config/Makefile.linuxother to config/Makefilefoo.

    2. Set the definition in configure to

            linux:<arch>*:*)      arch=linux<foo> ;;

      where <foo> is the Debian system name.

    3. Add an entry for the architecture to config/ARCHS

      linuxfoo             for FOO Linux gcc and glibc
    4. In config/root-config.in add an appropriate entry for the new architecture

      linuxfoo)
         # Linux with gcc >= 3.x
         auxcflags="-m32"   # replace with -m64 for 64bit machines
         auxldflags="-m32"  # replace with -m64 for 64bit machines
         auxlibs="-lm -ldl -rdynamic"
         ;;
    5. In test/Makefile.arch add appropriate lines for the new architecture.

      ifeq ($(ARCH),linux)
      # Linux with egcs, gcc 2.9x, gcc 3.x
      CXX           = g++
      CXXFLAGS      = $(OPT2) -Wall -fPIC
      LD            = g++
      LDFLAGS       = $(OPT2)
      SOFLAGS       = -shared
      endif
    6. Check that the platform is properly identified by the XRootd in the xrootd/src/xrootd/configure.classic script

             linux:foo*:*)    arch=foo_linux      ; platform=linux; ccflv=gcc;;
    7. Also add an entry to xrootd/src/xrootd/ARCHS. Note, that you may need to specify a different compiler config, especially if the option -m32 is not recognised. In that case, you should also modify xrootd/src/xrootd/configure.classic to recognise the architecture, and possibly add a configuration file in xrootd/src/xrootd/config/MakeRules.gccfoo

      foo_linux       gcc       all    for GNU/Linux on FOO
  3. Check that the system is properly recognized in base/inc/RConfig.h. Run

     touch dummy_file.c; gcc -E -dM dummy_file.c

    to see a list of GCC predefined pre-processor symbols. Look for an chip definition (e.g., __i386__, __powerpc__). If no valid entry exists in base/inc/RConfig.h, then add something like

       1 #if defined(linux) && defined(<cpp_arch>)
       2 #   define R__LINUX
       3 #   define R__UNIX
       4 #   define NEED_SIGJMP
       5 #   if defined(_ABI64) // For 64-bit word size
       6 #      define R__B64
       7 #   endif
       8 #   if defined(__BYTE_ORDER) && __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
       9 #      define R__BYTESWAP // For little endian machines
      10 #   endif
      11 #endif
      12 
    
  4. Check that the chip/os combo is properly detected in clib/src/Getline.c. The generic entries may be OK - that is the pre-processor conditional

       1 #if defined(TIOCGETP) && !defined(__sgi) && !defined(R__PPCLINUX) && \
       2     !defined(R__ALPHALINUX)  && !defined(R__MIPSLINUX) /* use BSD interface if possible */
       3 #include <sgtty.h>
       4 struct sgttyb   new_tty, old_tty;
       5 struct tchars   tch;
       6 struct ltchars  ltch;
       7 #else
       8 #ifdef SIGTSTP          /* need POSIX interface to handle SUSP */
       9 #include <termios.h>
      10 #if defined(__sun) || defined(__sgi) || defined(R__PPCLINUX) || \
      11     defined(R__ALPHALINUX) || defined(R__MIPSLINUX)
      12 #undef TIOCGETP         /* Solaris and SGI define TIOCGETP in <termios.h> */
      13 #undef TIOCSETP
      14 #endif
      15 
    

    the second POSIX branch will be chosen (termios.h is included). If not, add detection code as for for example R__MIPSLINUX and include that define in the BSD excluded list above.

  5. In cint/inc/G__ci.h check that CINT knows how to deal with variadic arguments to functions. Check if there's some entry that corresponds more or less to the the OS/CPU combo, and make a new switch. For example

       1 #elif (defined(__foo__)&&defined(__linux__))
       2 /**********************************************
       3  * FOO, Linux
       4  **********************************************/
       5 #if defined(_ABI64) /* For 64-bit word size */
       6 # define G__VAARG_INC_COPY_N 8
       7 #else
       8 # define G__VAARG_INC_COPY_N 4
       9 #endif
      10 #define G__VAARG_PASS_BY_REFERENCE 8
      11 #else
      12 /**********************************************
      13  * Other platforms,
      14  *  Try copying object as value.
      15  **********************************************/
      16 #define G__VAARG_NOSUPPORT
      17 #define G__VAARG_INC_COPY_N 4
      18 /* #define G__VAARG_PASS_BY_REFERENCE 8 */
      19 #endif
      20 
    
    If this does not work, you will get the error message
    Limitation: Variable argument is not supported for this platform
    when executing interpreted code like
       1 Form("Hello, World from %s", "me")
    

    In this case, we will need input from the CINT developers. Send a message to cint@root.cern.ch describing the problem and the architecture (OS, chip, kernel version, compiler, etc.).

Non-Linux platforms may need more work. The basic thing is to assume that the OS is like Linux, except of course, if there's a closer alternative, like BSD or Cygwin.

4. Builder scripts

build.sh, changes.sh

These two files should be put in a sub-directory called extra which is on the same level as the ROOT source code.

You should have

> ls 
extra        root
> ls extra
build.sh     changes.sh

You can execute

../extra/build.sh 

from the root source directory to build the packages.

Some of these steps can be skipped and the packages can be built using pbuilder. Do

../extra/build.sh --help

for more information.

5. Future plans

6. History

The information below is historic and archived. It is reproduced here for reference.

6.1. Port status (23/09/2009): Buildd port status

The current port status is summarised below. See also buildd logs (and possibly here).

Currently accepted ports

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

i386, mipsel

mips, hppa

64-bit

amd64,ia64

Currently awaiting dependencies

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

hurd-i386

m68k,

64-bit

Failed on buildd

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

arm

armel, s390, powerpc, sparc,

64-bit

alpha

6.1.1. Notes on failed archs

6.2. Port status (8/9/2007): 2 more architectures, mips and hppa

With the kind help of Dirk Van Hertem <dirk dot vanhertem at ieee dot org> and Boris (?) <boris at mogwitz dot eu> we have managed to build the ROOT packages on hppa and mips. Thiemo Seufer <ths at networkno dot de> helped on porting to mipsel.

That brings the list of supported and confirmed architectures up to

Currently accepted ports

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

i386, mipsel

powerpc, mips, hppa

64-bit

amd64

Currently untested ports

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

arm

armeb[*], m68k, sparc, s390,

64 bit

ia64, alpha

ppc64[*], s390x[*], sparc64[*]

Unsupported accepted ports

byte order/word size

little-endian

big-endian

32-bit

hurd-i386, netbsd-i386, kfreebsd-gnu

64-bit

netbsd-alpha

[*] Experimental or not fully supported ports.

6.3. The current unofficial repository

6.4. Technical issues for packaging

The approach is that the ROOT source tree contains scripts and templates to deal with packaging in general (that is for Debian and RPM), as well as some Debian and RPM specific templates.

The debian packaging directory is then build by running the script makedebdir.sh, followed by fakeroot debian/rules debian/control. The packaging scripts will try to build as many packages as possible on the build host. Note, that that sometimes means that you can get packages that wouldn't be possible on a pristine build system (Update: with the default set-up, you will get only the official packages, since ROOTs' configure will fail).

Note, that this scheme does not change the way the packages are built. It merely changes how the debian directory is prepared. After the debian directory is made, the developer can still tweak it to fit the system. Of course, such tweaks should eventually be propegated back to the packaging scripts in ROOT itself, to assure consistency.

In the eventual "official" Debian packages to come, the package maintainer would presumably run these two commands himself before dpkg-buildpackage, and the results of the commands (for instance the debian/ directory) would therefore enter into the diff.gz of the source package. Thus the source package uploaded to Debian would always be buildable with the normal steps of dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot.

If an end-user does apt-get source root and then re-runs the makedebdir script, it will overwrite the existing debian directory with information about the dependencies installed on the end-user's system. Hence an end-user may recompile Debian packages of ROOT building with support for unofficial (non-DFSG-free) libraries after editing the debian/rules file appropriately.

Update: The follwing is no longer the case. All build dependencies must be present when running the makedebdir.sh script, or the ROOT configure script will fail

6.5. Licensing

7. Thanks