Introduction

Table of Contents
Purpose
Features
Usage Overview
Versions of tla

Welcome to tla-buildpackage, a system that integrates the Debian package build system with GNU Arch. There are two different programs that implement the Arch specification: larch and tla. The more modern and better supported is tla, so this system and manual focuses solely on it.


Purpose

tla-buildpackage is designed to do this for you:


Features

tla-buildpackage has these features:


Usage Overview

Here is a high-level overview of the Debian development process using tla-buildpackage.

When you first start using tla-buildpackage, you'll run tbp-initarchive to set things up. Then, if you have some existing Debian packages, you'll import as much history as you like by using tbp-importdsc. Otherwise, to start a new package in tla-buildpackage, you'll use tbp-importorig to bring in the upstream sources and tag that to the Debian area.

As you work on your Debian sources, you'll use tla-buildpackage in place of debuild or dpkg-buildpackage (tla-buildpackage passes all its arguments to debuild for you). You can use standard tla commands, such as tla commit or tla logs, to commit changes and view history. When you have a final version of a Debian package, you'll upload it and run tbp-markdeb to record the version for future reference.


Versions of tla

Debian's unstable distribution currently contains version 1.3.5 of tla.

As of version 0.9.3, tla-buildpackage is fully compatible with all versions of tla.

Examples in this manual will refer to tla 1.0. However: