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# namcap

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- Creating packages
- pacman

Namcap is an Arch Linux tool to check binary packages and source PKGBUILDs for common packaging mistakes.

## Installation

Install the namcap package.

## Usage

To run namcap on a file, where filename is `PKGBUILD` or the name of a package binary `package_name.tar.zst`:

    $ namcap filename

If you want to see extra informational messages, then invoke namcap with the `--info` (`-i`) flag:

    $ namcap --info filename

Namcap uses a system of tags to classify the output. Tags are of three types — errors (denoted by `E`), warnings (denoted by `W`) and informational (denoted by `I`). An error is important and should be fixed immediately; mostly they relate to insufficient security, missing licenses or permission problems.

Normally namcap prints a human-readable explanation (sometimes with suggestions on how to fix the problem). If you want output which can be easily parsed by a program, then pass the `--machine-readable` (`-m`) flag to namcap.

The tag file `/usr/share/namcap/namcap-tags` (online source) consists of lines specifying the human-readable form of the hyphenated tags used in the namcap code. A line beginning with a `#` is treated as a comment:

    # The comment
    machine-parsable-tag %s :: The human-readable description for the tag %s

Note:

- `::` (double colon) separates the hyphenated machine-readable tag from the human-readable description.
- `%s` is a format specifier, see #Creating a module for more information.

See namcap(1), README and NEWS for more information.

## Creating a module

The main namcap program `namcap.py` takes as parameters the filename of a package or a `PKGBUILD` and makes a pkginfo object, which it passes to a list of rules defined in `__tarball__` and `__pkgbuild__`. Once your module is finalized, remember to add it to the appropriate array:

- `__tarball__` defines the rules which process binary packages,
- `__pkgbuild__` defines the rules which process `PKGBUILD`s.

A sample namcap module is like this:

    namcap/url.py

    import pacman

    class package:
        def short_name(self):
            return "url"

        def long_name(self):
            return "Verifies url is included in a PKGBUILD"

        def prereq(self):
            return ""

        def analyze(self, pkginfo, tar):
            ret = [[], [], []]
            if not hasattr(pkginfo, 'url'):
                ret[0].append(("missing-url", ()))
            return ret

        def type(self):
            return "pkgbuild"

Each namcap module must have the following methods:

- `short_name(self)` — returns a string containing a short name of the module. Usually, this is the same as the basename(1) of the module file.

- `long_name(self)` — returns a string containing a concise description of the module. This description is used when listing all the rules using `namcap --rules=rule_list`.

- `prereq(self)` — returns a string containing the prerequisites needed for the module to operate properly. Usually empty string (`""`) for modules processing `PKGBUILD`s and `"tar"` for modules processing package files. `"extract"` should be specified if the package contents should be extracted to a temporary directory before further processing.

- `analyze(self, pkginfo, tar)` — should return a list comprising in turn of three lists: error, warning and information tags respectively. Each member of these tag lists should be a tuple consisting of two components: the short — hyphenated — form of the tag with the appropriate format specifiers (like `%s`) and the parameters.

- `type(self)` — returns `"pkgbuild"` for a module processing `PKGBUILD`s, and `"tarball"` for a module processing a binary package file.

Categories:

- Arch projects
- Commands
- Package development