vieter/docs/content/usage/builds/_index.md

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# Building packages

The automatic build system is what makes Vieter very useful as a replacement
for an AUR helper. It can perodically build packages & publish them to your
personal Vieter repository server, removing the need to build the packages
locally.

## Adding builds

Before the cron system can start building your package, you need to add its
info to the system. The Vieter repository server exposes an HTTP API for this
(see the [HTTP API Docs](https://rustybever.be/docs/vieter/api/) for more
info). For ease of use, the Vieter binary contains a CLI interface for
interacting with this API (see [Configuration](/configuration) for
configuration details). The [man
pages](https://rustybever.be/man/vieter/vieter-targets.1.html) describe this in
greater detail, but the basic usage is as follows:

```
vieter targets add some-url some-repository
```

Here, `some-url` is the URL of the Git repository containing the PKGBUILD. This
URL is passed to `git clone`, meaning the repository should be public. Vieter
expects the same format as an AUR Git repository, so you can directly use AUR
URLs here. Alternatively, you can also provide the URL to a PKGBUILD file
instead. See
[vieter-targets-add(1)](https://rustybever.be/man/vieter/vieter-targets-add.1.html)
for more information.

`some-repo` is the repository to which the built package archives should be
published.

The above command intentionally leaves out a few parameters to make the CLI
more useable. For information on how to modify all parameters using the CLI,
see
[vieter-targets(1)](https://rustybever.be/man/vieter/vieter-targets.1.html).

## Reading logs

The logs of each build are uploaded to the Vieter repository server, along with
information about the exit code of the build container, when the build
started/ended etc. These logs can then be accessed using the [HTTP
API](https://rustybever.be/docs/vieter/api/).

For ease of use, the logs are also available using some CLI commands; see
[vieter-logs(1)](https://rustybever.be/man/vieter/vieter-logs.1.html) for more
information.