rBuild is the unified interface for Conary, rMake, and rBuilder. The purpose of this tool is to provide a single, unified, and fully-documented interface (command line and Python API) to developers using rPath technologies, using an extensible plugin framework, which automates many of the steps required to follow rPath's recommended best practices.

rBuild depends on product-definition packages that define the characteristics of the product you are building, including which images you build, what platform your product is based on, and so forth. Use the rBuilder interface to create and edit these packages. rBuild updates them automatically when appropriate.

A shell script written using the command-line interface should be relatively easy to transform to a Python program that uses the Python API. You can provide your own plugins that dynamically extend that command-line interface and Python API. Your plugins can also hook into other parts of the API, allowing you to enforce preconditions and take action following successful actions.

Versions 1.x are focused on the command line. Public python APIs will be generally stable and will not be changed without specific reason, but strong API stability will not be maintained. API changes will be documented in the NEWS file for versions 1.x

It is currently intended that when version 2.0 is released, public interfaces will be kept stable. The general rule is that API stability allows making changes that should be backward-compatible in well-formed Python code. For rBuild, "stable" is defined as:

• Adding optional keyword parameters is acceptable.
• Adding additional methods, classes, and functions is acceptable.
• Raising a more specific error class is acceptable, as long as the more specific error class is a subclass of the error previously raised.
• Modifying the semantics of existing arguments is not acceptable, except to extend them in ways that are generally functionally compatible.

The general exception is that if a significant functional bug cannot be fixed without an interface change, the interface may be changed (and the change noted in the NEWS file), and we will make our best effort to mitigate the effects of the change.

All documentation regarding stable interfaces is relevant only to published stable releases; it is not in force for alpha and beta releases, including 0.x releases and any automated builds.

When interfaces are deprecated, the deprecated interface will be supported for a major release cycle when feasible. That is, if an interface is deprecated during 2.x releases after 2.0 is released, it will be available during 3.x releases, and may be removed starting with 4.0. During 3.x, it will be possible to request that that API will raise rbuild.errors.DeprecatedInterfaceError; otherwise, the APIs will provide a warning (printed to standard error in the command-line use case).

API documentation is available at http://cvs.rpath.com/rbuild-docs/ or by running "make html" and viewing docs/developer/index.html (requires epydoc).

When developing rbuild and rbuild plugins, please consider using our pylint commit hook. This hook will run pylint against the files you modified in your commit and warn you of any pylint problems. Add the following lines to the file .hg/hgrc in your rbuild checkout:

[hooks] precommit=./pylint/pylint_commit

Pylint problems that were caused by your patch should either be fixed or disabled by adding a pylint pragma line. The pylint pragma line should look like this:

Please visit https://issues.rpath.com/ and file issues in the rBuild project.