I've been wrestling with git-annex to try to make it build on Debian, or more specifically, wrestling with Haskell dependencies.
After a fair amount of futzing around, and pestering a bunch of people in the process (thanks for the help! ) I finally managed to make it build.
I figured I would post the steps here, since it's not completely trivial, and I expect that a few others might be interested in building newer versions as well.
There appears to currently be two methods:
- Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid
- Starting out on Wheezy, and then picking the rest from Sid (it seems at least libghc-safesemaphore-dev from Sid is critical for newer git-annex)
- WebDAV suport will not be available with this method
- Cabal packages
Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid
Start off with a clean wheezy chroot
sudo debootstrap wheezy debian-wheezy
sudo chroot debian-wheezy
Install some build tools
apt-get update
apt-get install devscripts git
Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)
mkdir /src
cd /src
git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
cd git-annex
Remove WebDAV dependency which can't be satisfied anywhere
sed '/libghc-dav-dev/d' -i debian/control
Create dummy build-depends package and install all available Wheezy dependencies using it
mk-build-deps
dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
apt-get install -f
(this will remove the build-depends package)
Add Sid sources and install all available Sid dependencies
echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian sid main" >>/etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
apt-get install -f
(the build-depends package should now be fully installed)
Disable the 'make test' that fails due to missing hothasktags
echo >>debian/rules
echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules
Build!
debuild -us -uc -Igit
Cabal packages
Start off with a clean Sid(/Wheezy) chroot
sudo debootstrap sid debian-sid
sudo chroot debian-sid
Install a smaller set of tools and build-depends from Debian (cabal needs these to compile the Haskell stuff)
apt-get update
apt-get install ghc cabal-install devscripts libz-dev pkg-config c2hs libgsasl7-dev libxml2-dev libgnutls-dev c2hs git debhelper ikiwiki perlmagick uuid rsync openssh-client fakeroot
Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)
mkdir /src
cd /src
git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
cd git-annex
Install the Haskell build-dependencies from cabal
cabal update
cabal install --only-dependencies
Optional step which doesn't work (might in the future)
If we want to run the 'make test' after build we need hothasktags, which is only available via cabal
apt-get install happy
cabal install hothasktags
export PATH=$PATH:~/.cabal/bin
But this currently fails silently inside make test->fast->tags, and if you dig a bit (manually edit the makefile to be more verbose) you see
hothasktags: ./Command/AddUnused.hs: hGetContents: invalid argument (invalid byte sequence)
Disable the 'make test' that fails
echo >>debian/rules
echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules
Remove all Debian package haskell depends (taken care of by cabal instead)
sed '/\tlibghc/d' -i debian/control
Build!
debuild -us -uc -Igit
possibly related to this Debian issue:
trying to install git-annex with cabal on OS X 10.8.3, the build fails with
This was after following all of the instructions for the Homebrew install at http://git-annex.branchable.com/install/OSX/ I was able to work around this issue by installing with the WebDAV flag disabled (ie, added the option --flags="-WebDAV" to last command in the OS X install instructions):