Re: Pulling data in for package build
On 8 May 2003, Elizabeth Barham wrote:
> Under normal circumstances, one builds the database this way:
>
> 1) data is pulled down off of a public website
> 2) software is built
Does this build process depend from the data installed on the box?
> 3) software reads data fetched in (1) and builds database
Does "Software" mean the data are needed in the installation process
(in a {pre/post}inst script) or are the data just needed if the software
is running.
> While this may seem well and good, I wonder if (1) is such a great
> step and if it would be better to simply ship the data with the
> sources. Two reasons come to mind:
>
> 1) The data occasionally changes, meaning that some tweaking
> of the software's config file may be necessary.
You could perhaps use versioned depends to solve this.
> 2) Fetching the data in an automated build environment seems
> overly redundant.
I would vote against fetching the data while building the package (did
I understand this right). The build process should work on an offline
machine. So you could provide the data in following ways:
1. data_u.v.orig.tar.gz -> data_u.v-w_all.deb
(Perhaps: "Suggests: prog")
prog_x.y.orig.tar.gz -> prog_x.y-z_arch.deb
Depending from the questions above:
Build-Depends: data (= u.v-w) [if this versioning makes sense]
Depends: data (= u.v-w) [if this versioning makes sense]
2. Add data fetched from the web as patch to the upstream source of prog.
Please make sure to build two binary packages from it, to separate
architecture independent data from architecture dependend binary.
3. Create a new upstream source prog+data_x.y.orig.tar.gz and explain
in debian/README.Debian in detail why this makes sense.
> So, I am here to ask the experts what you recommend.
Well - no real expert, but perhaps a helpful comment for further discussion.
Kind regards
Andreas.
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