Off the record - Craig Box

I had to spend a lot of time today re-remembering how to take a CVS/SVN tree and make a distributable package of it. Here are my notes, for me next time, and for anyone interested, now.

sed -i -e "s/AC_INIT(NetworkManager-ppp_vpn, 0.7.0-beta, eemynotna@gmail.com, NetworkManager-ppp_vpn)/AC_INIT(NetworkManager-pptp, 0.6.5, eemynotna@gmail.com, NetworkManager-pptp)/" configure.in
sed -i -e "s/SUBDIRS = src auth-dialog auth-dialog-general properties po/SUBDIRS = src auth-dialog properties po/" Makefile.am
sed -i -e "s_auth-dialog-general/Makefile__" configure.in
ln -s /usr/include/pppd src/pppd
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make dist

What's all that do, then?

1. Downgrade the version number
2. Remove the new auth-dialog-general, which isn't ready for primetime yet, from the Makefile
3. (as above, but for the configure script)
4. Link the system pppd dir - not actually packaged, but <tt>make dist</tt> fails if the PPP headers are missing
5. Run the GNOME autogen script, which runs the autotools
6. Builds a NetworkManager-pptp-0.6.5.tar.gz, with a configure script, ready for packaging.

It helps to remember things. Before re-reading the docs, and realising there was an autogen script, I was running all these commands (which of course required Perry to figure out, as I hate the autotools)

aclocal
autoheader
intltoolize --copy --force --automake
libtoolize --force
automake --copy --add-missing
autoconf
./configure --with-pppd=/usr/include/pppd
ln -s /usr/include/pppd src/pppd
make dist

(Updated updated update: historical information only; blog posts from 2007 are rarely relevant in 2011.)

I've built a new Ubuntu package of the PPTP plugin for NetworkManager, from a recent SVN checkout. It closes some bugs, and hopefully solves a number of other issues with the stability of the program.

Download links removed; if you're still running Edgy or Feisty, you should really upgrade.

I will rely on comments here to gauge the success of this version, and if it works well, I'll get it uploaded for Gutsy, and possibly push for an -updates release.

Thanks to Ed Schofield for pointing out I'd only linked to i386 packages, and compiling me an AMD64 package. He reports it clears up the segfault. Andrew Mitchell also contributed an AMD64 Edgy deb.

If you've come here from Launchpad, welcome, and please take the time to have a read around. I sometimes post about interesting stuff.

Please see the updated NetworkManager PPTP Plugin for Ubuntu page. Thanks!

Some time after blogging about getting NetworkManager's PPTP plugin checked out of CVS, I have some news to report.

Tony Mee is a legend. The author of the plugin has spent a lot of time with me, by e-mail, Jabber and Skype, accepting bugfixes, working on solutions, explaining things slowly for my non-programmer-brain. Most of the work done has been by him. I can't thank him enough here.

A few points to note first:

• This plugin is in the middle of being converted to handle things that aren't just PPTP, and as such it presents a few more options than it might need to. Ignore screens about GPRS and Bluetooth; hopefully a subsequent version will see me disable them.
• It is the CVS HEAD version, with the new pluggable-auth-dialog removed, as it just didn't want to build right, and isn't yet ready to replace the old auth-dialog.
• Default PPP options might not suit - you will probably have to tick "Refuse EAP" on Authentication and "Require MPPE encryption/Require 128 bit MPPE encryption" on Compression & Encryption to connect to a Windows 2003 VPN server.
• There are a variety of bugs with the current version of NM that could bite you. The VPN plugins can't set the MTU, you can't edit a VPN connection immediately after making it, irrelevant tabs aren't hidden - most of these will require the new 0.7 series to be released, which probably won't happen before Edgy.
• You will have to restart DBUS, or log out and log back in again, after installing this plugin, before you can connect.

As usual, everything I know about autotools and CVS I leant from Perry. Thanks!

Now, for the fun part. I have packaged the NetworkManager PPTP plugin for Ubuntu 6.06. Download it here. I will have it up in an apt repository in the next couple of days. Please raise bugs in the program at the GNOME bugzilla, please leave comments on the package or general messages of "Hello!" in the comments below.

The next step is to find out how to disable all the irrelevant parts in the package, and start considering my potential future as an Ubuntu MOTU.

A while ago I promised Anthony Mee that I'd try and build the latest version of his NetworkManger VPN plugin for Ubuntu, and a couple of weeks ago I realised I had no excuses not to start.

I was tripped up while trying to build it: libtool: link: cannot find the library `/usr/lib/libXrender.la' or unhandled argument `/usr/lib/libXrender.la'.

Two minutes on #ubuntu-motu, I was fixed up by slomo: I use the non-official XGL repository, which has a broken libcairo2-dev package: I needed to edit /usr/lib/libcairo.la and replace -L/usr/lib/libXrender.la with -lXrender. Seeing as the web didn't seem to know this fact, and I couldn't find anywhere on the WLUG wiki to put this, I thought I'd teach it here.

Slowly checked NetworkManager out of CVS.

Last weekend Perry gave me a crash course in building things with autotools, using 'cvs export' or 'make dist' to get distributable-ready code. With a bit of hacking around, we managed to get the plugin built.

Came across a big problem; the old plugin was "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp", and the new one is "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.ppp_starter". Took a random guess to figure out that the old VPN plugin was stored in gconf, and this was what was crashing the VPN dialog. Perry opined that the barrier to entry to anything with DBus was going to be so much higher than simple Unix-like XML-readin' apps, and I hope he'll put his feelings in words soon. When I get back to that machine, I'll raise a bug.

I think I now have everything I need to know to build a Debian package. Shame the thing doesn't actually work or anything. Have added Tony to Jabber and will hope to make some progress soon.

WordPress, how hard is to get an editor which gives me a <code>, <tt> or other monospace-this-part button?