Re: Non-Debian packaging practice
On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 10:35:22PM -0000, StealthMonger wrote:
> Debian discourages creating Debian-native packages: "This type of
> packaging is only appropriate for the debian-specific packages, which
> will never be useful in another distribution." [1] But creating it
> for other distributions requires some knowledge of what those other
> distributions expect of a package.
I am/was upstream for a few packages that are used by multiple
distributions. They're not too picky usually about their needs as
generally the distribution has to fit in with the upstream, but there
would be some points:
- Have a clear copyright and license statement, especially if there
are multiple authors and/or you don't use one of the common ones
- Make sure your dependencies are clearly defined so that the author
knows what to look for, if you use auto* make sure you check for
those libraries. If you need a specific version, make sure you check
that too
- Make sure the thing builds twice or can do build, clean, build
Seriously, there is stuff out there that won't!
- When it comes for installing, allow the installer to put the files
where they want. A DESTDIR or prefix variable helps, but so does
those not-so-obviously-named things that auto* provide.
> The current interest here is primarily in packages consisting of shell
> scripts, as opposed to compilable code, but presumably the question
> arises in either case.
For shell scripts, if you use just /bin/sh don't use bashisms, use
checkbashisms program to err, check for bashisms.
In general, writing something that works *for me* is easy, writing
something that works *for everyone* is a lot harder.
You'll probably not hear from package maintainers that much, over 5
years maintaining one thing and I've heard from some a handful of times.
- Craig
--
Craig Small GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE 95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
Eye-Net Consulting http://www.enc.com.au/ MIEE Debian developer
csmall at : enc.com.au ieee.org debian.org
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