A package is the unit of installation on a Fuchsia system.
To be added...
The majority of this process relies on a tool called pm which is available under //tools. This document describes the various steps to generate a package. For more details about each step, see pm's help messages.
The initial step is to create a manifest file $MANIFEST_FILE describing the contents of the package. The manifest is a mere list of lines of the form destination=source, where source is the path to the file on the host machine and destination the location of that file in the final package.
The manifest must include at least one line for the package identity file:
meta/package=path/to/generated/package.json
This identity file should contain the following data:
{
"name": "<package name",
"version": "<package version>"
}
That file can be created using the pm init command.
From this point on, we are going to use $PACKAGE_DIR to denote a staging dir where the package is going to be built.
First, we need to initialize the package with:
pm -o $PACKAGE_DIR -n $PACKAGE_NAME init
In order to create the package, a signing key is required. You may provide your own key or generate one at $SIGNING_KEY with:
pm -k $SIGNING_KEY genkey
TODO: add more details about signing keys, possibly in pm's help
The next step is to generate an archive with the package's metadata:
pm -o $PACKAGE_DIR -k $SIGNING_KEY -m $MANIFEST_FILE build
This will create the metadata archive at $PACKAGE_DIR/meta.far.
Finally, we put it all together to generate the package itself:
pm -o $PACKAGE_DIR -k $SIGNING_KEY -m $MANIFEST_FILE archive
This will create the package archive at $PACKAGE_DIR/$PACKAGE_NAME-0.far. Note that this step needs to be re-run if the contents of the package change.
First, initialize a directory that will serve as a packages repository:
pm newrepo -repo $REPO
This will create a directory structure at $REPO that is ready for publishing packages.
The next step is to publish packages to that repository:
pm publish -a -r $REPO -f $PACKAGE_ARCHIVE.far
This will parse the provided package archive (.far file) and publish it in the provided $REPO directory.
Running this command multiple times with different package archives will publish those packages to the same repository. Similarly, new versions of a same package can be published using the same command.
Finally, start the amber server with:
pm serve -repo $REPO
This will start an amber server on the host machine at port 8083 by default.
All commands in this section are executed on the target device.
First, add the new repository as an update source:
amberctl add_src -x -f http://$HOST_ADDRESS:8083/config.json
Then, run the component exposed by the package:
run $COMPONENT_URI
This will: