Capybara is a system to help you compile and install free software, based on the epkg
package manager. To compile a
capybara package, you just use one of our simple makefiles (see
example) and type make
. This single command automatically downloads the source
code from the internet, compiles it, and installs the resulting files into a directory like
/opt/packagename-1.2.3
. You then install the package with the command epkg
packagename
. Instead of copying all of the files into your system directories,
epkg
makes a bunch of symbolic links so that the files appear to be in correct
locations. With the files still confined to the package directory, you can easily uninstall them
(epkg -r packagename
) or remove them completely (rm -r
/opt/packagename-1.2.3
). You can even browse or use the package files without installing
the package, since they are just sitting in a directory.
You are welcome to use capybara just for installing the occasional package that you can't figure out — or you can use capybara to build a nearly complete system from scratch. Here's how you do it:
cd /usr/share/capybara/packages/xbill; make; epkg xbill
.