Re: newbie packaging question
On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 12:54:08PM -0700, Eric Winger wrote:
> I hope that I've selected the correct debian mailing list for this
> question. But if not, I would appreciate if you could redirect properly.
Nope, this is the right spot.
> My first steps are proving to be quite haltingly slow. I'm the Debian
> New Maintainer's Guide and I've setup a simple goal for myself. To take
> an installation .bin (known to work) and make a debian package out of
> it. No sources, just a .bin. Then debian, upon installing this package,
> would simply run a little config script to run the .bin file.
Ayup. Quite simple.
> But in following the instructions in the doc it tells me to create some
> directories with my source in them, then use dh-make first. But dh_make
> keeps telling me it can't find my source package.
That would be the tarball containing the "source" for your package. The
"source" is simply whatever gets released without debian modifications. Of
course, there are "debian native" packages, where the source and debian bits
are all together.
The things which absolutely have to be in a package in order to be built are
debian/rules and debian/control. debian/rules gives the commands required
to make the package, and debian/control has the information necessary to
name the binary packages, dependencies, and the rest.
Your best bet is to get the source for a really simple, debian-native,
architecture-independent package, and change the small bit of code that has
to be changed to copy your binary to the right place.
Executing commands after installation can be done in the postinst file,
which is usually just a shell script. Adding a startup script can be done
with dh_installinit (see the manpage).
An example of a simple package as described above is phtml. (Mandatory
disclosure: I maintain it).
> So two questions, does the source package need to be raw code or is it
> specific term to refer to a C source filled directory? And two, is my
> goal reasonable for a first-timer?
Your goal is reasonable, and no, "source code" doesn't have to be C source
or anything like that. Consider doc-rfc, or Perl script packages.
- Matt
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