Packaging

Note for packagers

This is a special note for distribution packagers: There is a standard feature of GitHub which enables you to be notified of new package releases: In the top right bar there is the Watch option, which has the suboption to be notified of releases only. Please subscribe so you won’t miss any of our new releases. Thanks!

Dependencies

The dependencies for Nicotine+ are described in DEPENDENCIES.md.

GNU/Linux instructions

Building a source distribution

To build source distribution files (.tar.bz2 & .tar.gz) from the git repository run:

python setup.py sdist --formats=bztar,gztar

The source distribution files will be located in the dist subdirectory of your git repository.

Building a Debian package

Unstable and stable PPAs are already provided for pre-compiled packages, as described in the README.md. However, if you wish to build your own package perform the following.

Start by generating the “upstream” tarball:

$ cd nicotine_source
$ ./debian/rules get-orig-source

Build the Debian source package:

$ debuild -S -sa

Build the binary from the source package and upstream tarball via sbuild:

$ sbuild ../nicotine(...).dsc

Building a RPM package

You need to install the RPM building tools first:

• On Redhat/Fedora based distributions: sudo dnf install rpm-build python3-gobject-devel

• On Debian/Ubuntu based distributions: sudo apt install rpm

Then you can create an RPM with:

python setup.py bdist_rpm

The RPM package will be located in the dist subdirectory of your git repository.

Windows

GitHub Actions currently builds Nicotine+ installers for Windows, but the following information may be useful if you want to generate an installer on your own Windows machine.

Building a frozen application via PyInstaller

First, follow the instructions on installing MSYS2: https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started.html#windows-logo-windows

Then, install dependencies:

export ARCH=x86_64
files/windows/dependencies-core.sh files/windows/dependencies-packaging.sh

Clone the Nicotine+ git repository:

pacman -S git
git clone https://github.com/Nicotine-Plus/nicotine-plus
cd nicotine-plus

Run PyInstaller:

pyinstaller files/windows/nicotine.spec

After the frozen application build finished you can find it in the dist\Nicotine+ subdirectory.

If you want to run the frozen application you can launch the executable dist\Nicotine+\Nicotine+.exe.

Building a NSIS installer from the frozen application

Run the following:

cd files/windows
makensis -DARCH=x86_64 nicotine.nsi

You should now find a Nicotine+-$(version).exe installer in the files\windows directory.

Building a 32-bit (i686) application and installer

Start a MinGW 32-bit terminal, and follow the above instructions again, replacing any instance of “x86_64” with “i686” when installing packages.

Preferably, clone a fresh copy of the nicotine-plus git repository before freezing Nicotine+ with PyInstaller again.