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Packaging suggestions for NetSurf 30 July 2008
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This document lays out some suggestions for people interested in packaging
NetSurf for UNIX-like OSes.
We consider the Debian (and thus Ubuntu) packages excellent examples to
crib from. They do everything right.
Building NetSurf
==================
You should change Makefile.config to be specific (rather than rely on AUTO)
for the libraries and functionality you want to include. This will help
your packages be consistent. Also remember that you can turn off
functionality such as PDF export, RISC OS Sprite support, SVG rendering etc.
from here should you require a smaller, lighter build.
Launching NetSurf
===================
The GTK port of NetSurf requires access to some resources at run time.
These are stored in gtk/res/ in the source tree. Some of these files are
symlinks into the !NetSurf directory, which is the application container
for the native RISC OS build. None of the other files from the !NetSurf
directory are required - the symlinks are used only as a way of making
checkouts smaller and making sure changes to one set of resources updates
the other.
The binary that the build system produces is called "nsgtk". There is also
a shell script called "netsurf" that will set up the environment and launch
the nsgtk binary. Do not ship this shell script with your package. It is
included only as a convience for launching NetSurf from the build tree.
Instead, you should move nsgtk to /usr/bin/netsurf (or wherever your
distribution's packaging policy suggests) and copy the contents of
gtk/res/ (dereferencing the symlinks, obviously) to /usr/share/netsurf (or
wherever your packaging policy suggests).
You will need to tell NetSurf where to find its resources. NetSurf searches
three locations by default when trying to load them, in this order:
1. ~/.netsurf/
2. $NETSURFRES/
3. /usr/share/netsurf/
The second one is how the netsurf launcher script controls it. The third
location is controlled by the NETSURF_GTK_RESOURCES option in
Makefile.config, and this is the recommended way for packagers to change
the location it searches, as this still allows the user some flexibility in
changing what NetSurf uses.
User agent string
===================
You may also want to change NetSurf's user agent string to include the
name of your distribution. The user agent string is build by a function
kept in utils/useragent.c - you'll want to change the macro called
NETSURF_UA_FORMAT_STRING. It's processed via sprintf, so keep that in
mind when changing it. The first two printf parameters are major and minor
version numbers, the second two are OS name (uname -s) and architecture
(uname -m). You might want change this to something like:
"NetSurf/%d.%d (%s; %s; Debian GNU/Linux)"
or similar. Please don't be tempted to mention Mozilla or similar - let's
let that lie die.
Home page URL
===============
If the user hasn't specified a home page URL in their Preferences, NetSurf
defaults to a "portal" welcome page at about:netsurf - if you wish to
change this, you can do so by overriding the NETSURF_HOMEPAGE URL in
Makefile.config.
If you make significant changes to NetSurf in your package, please ask your
users to report bugs to your bug tracker, not ours. We'd also be interested
in seeing the diffs for these changes - we may be able to integrate them
to make your job easier in future.