conan export-pkg

$ conan export-pkg [-h] [-bf BUILD_FOLDER] [-e ENV] [-f]
                   [-if INSTALL_FOLDER] [-o OPTIONS] [-pr PROFILE]
                   [-pf PACKAGE_FOLDER] [-s SETTINGS] [-sf SOURCE_FOLDER]
                   [-j JSON]
                   path reference

Exports a recipe, then creates a package from local source and build folders.

If ‘–package-folder’ is provided it will copy the files from there, otherwise it will execute package() method over ‘–source-folder’ and ‘–build-folder’ to create the binary package.

positional arguments:
  path                  Path to a folder containing a conanfile.py or to a
                        recipe file e.g., my_folder/conanfile.py
  reference             user/channel or pkg/version@user/channel (if name and
                        version are not declared in the conanfile.py)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -bf BUILD_FOLDER, --build-folder BUILD_FOLDER
                        Directory for the build process. Defaulted to the
                        current directory. A relative path to current
                        directory can also be specified
  -e ENV, --env ENV     Environment variables that will be set during the
                        package build, -e CXX=/usr/bin/clang++
  -f, --force           Overwrite existing package if existing
  -if INSTALL_FOLDER, --install-folder INSTALL_FOLDER
                        Directory containing the conaninfo.txt and
                        conanbuildinfo.txt files (from previous 'conan
                        install'). Defaulted to --build-folder If these files
                        are found in the specified folder and any of '-e',
                        '-o', '-pr' or '-s' arguments are used, it will raise
                        an error.
  -o OPTIONS, --options OPTIONS
                        Define options values, e.g., -o pkg:with_qt=true
  -pr PROFILE, --profile PROFILE
                        Profile for this package
  -pf PACKAGE_FOLDER, --package-folder PACKAGE_FOLDER
                        folder containing a locally created package. If a
                        value is given, it won't call the recipe 'package()'
                        method, and will run a copy of the provided folder.
  -s SETTINGS, --settings SETTINGS
                        Define settings values, e.g., -s compiler=gcc
  -sf SOURCE_FOLDER, --source-folder SOURCE_FOLDER
                        Directory containing the sources. Defaulted to the
                        conanfile's directory. A relative path to current
                        directory can also be specified
  -j JSON, --json JSON  Path to a json file where the install information will
                        be written

The export-pkg command let you create a package from already existing files in your working folder, it can be useful if you are using a build process external to Conan and do not want to provide it with the recipe. Nevertheless, you should take into account that it will generate a package and Conan won’t be able to guarantee its reproducibility or regenerate it again. This is not the normal or recommended flow for creating Conan packages.

Execution of this command will result in several files copied to the package folder in the cache identified by its package_id (Conan will perform all the required actions to compute this _id_: build the graph, evaluate the requirements and options, and call any required method), but there could be two different sources for the files:

If the argument --package-folder is provided, Conan will just copy all the contents of that folder to the package one in the cache.

If no --package-folder is given, Conan will execute the method package() once and the self.copy(...) functions will copy matching files from the source_folder and build_folder to the corresponding path in the Conan cache (working directory corresponds to the build_folder).

There are different scenarios where this command could look like useful:

You are working locally on a package and you want to upload it to the cache to be able to consume it from other recipes. In this situation you can use the export-pkg command to copy the package to the cache, but you could also put the package in editable mode and avoid this extra step.

You only have precompiled binaries available, then you can use the export-pkg to create the Conan package, or you can build a working recipe to download and package them. These scenarios are described in the documentation section How to package existing binaries.

Note

Note that if --profile, settings or options are not provided to export-pkg, the configuration will be extracted from the information stored after a previous conan install. That information might be incomplete in some edge cases, so we strongly recommend the usage of --profile or --settings, --options, etc.

Examples

Create a package from a directory containing the binaries for Windows/x86/Release:

We need to collect all the files from the local filesystem and tell Conan to compute the proper package_id so its get associated with the correct settings and it works when consuming it.

If the files in the working folder are:
```
Release_x86/lib/libmycoollib.a
Release_x86/lib/other.a
Release_x86/include/mylib.h
Release_x86/include/other.h
```
then, just run:
```
$ conan new Hello/0.1 --bare  # It creates a minimum recipe example
$ conan export-pkg . Hello/0.1@user/stable -s os=Windows -s arch=x86 -s build_type=Release --package-folder=Release_x86
```
This last command will copy all the contents from the package-folder and create the package associated with the settings provided through the command line.
Create a package from a source and build folder:

The objective is to collect the files that will be part of the package from the source folder (include files) and from the build folder (libraries), so, if these are the files in the working folder:
```
sources/include/mylib.h
sources/src/file.cpp
build/lib/mylib.lib
build/lib/mylib.tmp
build/file.obj
```
we would need a slightly more complicated conanfile.py than in the previous example to select which files to copy, we need to change the patterns in the package() method:
```
def package(self):
   self.copy("*.h", dst="include", src="include")
   self.copy("*.lib", dst="lib", keep_path=False)
```
Now, we can run Conan to create the package:
```
$ conan export-pkg . Hello/0.1@user/stable -pr=myprofile --source-folder=sources --build-folder=build
```