Here is how to check that an spkg is correctly formatted

== First the directory structure ==

  src/            -- *vanilla* upstream
  SPKG.txt   -- describes the spkg in wiki format, each new revision
needs an updated changelog entry or an automatic "needs work" from my
end at review time
  spkg-install  -- the install script
  spkg-check -- runs the test suite - this is somewhat optional since
not all spkgs have test suites
  patches      -- for patches against upstream. Each file
foo.extension needs to have a diff against the original file, i.e.
foo.extension.patch for easy rebases against new upstream

There are usually a number of things to do for all spkgs:

• ensure that "make install" is non-parallel, i.e. do a "export MAKE=make"
• SAGE_LOCAL check (#633)
• add spkg-check (#299)
• add proper SPKG.txt to all packages
• /usr/bin/env bash (#1638)
• add md5sums for spkgs (#329)
• set LDFLAGS on OSX (#3349)

A Sample spkg-install

if [ "$SAGE_LOCAL" = "" ]; then
   echo "SAGE_LOCAL undefined ... exiting";
   echo "Maybe run 'sage -sh'?"
   exit 1
fi

cd src

./configure --prefix="$SAGE_LOCAL"
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
   echo "Error configuring PACKAGE_NAME."
   exit 1
fi

make
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
   echo "Error building PACKAGE_NAME."
   exit 1
fi

make install
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
   echo "Error installing PACKAGE_NAME."
   exit 1
fi