Re: Debian source code search engine

[Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <javifs@gmail.com>]

2009/5/25 Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>:
> On Sun, 2009-05-24 at 22:31 +0200, Peter De Wachter wrote:
>> I've set up a search engine which indexes Debian's source code:
>>
>>   http://walrus.rave.org/source/
>>
>> Currently, unstable main and contrib are indexed, in total 70 gigabytes
>> of source. (It would probably be nice to have stable and testing as
>> well, but I don't have enough disk space available. I skipped non-free
>> in fear of annoying licenses.)
> [...]
>
> Cool - that looks really useful.  However, it looks like you're just
> running "dpkg-source -x" to unpack packages.  This misses any Debian
> changes made using a patch system.  Unfortunately there is no standard
> mechanism to apply patches in version 1 source patches, but it should be
> easy enough to support the standard patch queue formats.

[I'm thinking out loud here]

If you build the packages (i.e. 'debian/rules build') you are sure to
have the Debian changes in the source code applied since whatever
patch management system the package uses it must be applied before the
build target starts.

However, you would be wasting a lot of CPU cycles just to get the
source if you went through all the build process. Maybe it could be
interrupted before it starts, or the 'build' target in debian/rules
could be emptied by manipulating debian/rules so that 'fakeroot
debian/rules build' gets you the source but does not start buidling
it.

Is there a way to tell 'make' to execute all the dependencies for a
target but not go through the target itself?


Regards

Javier