Re: kernel maintenance

[Alvar Bray <alvar@meiko.co.uk>]

Hi Bill,

In general a non-debian source code file e.g. foo is related to the
debian package foo.deb as follows:

          foo                     Original src
           |
           | foo.diff.gz          Debian diffs
           v
        foo.tar.gz                Debianized src 
           |
           | debian.rules         Makefile in src package
           V
         foo.deb                  Debian package

i.e. the the diff are relative to the original src code.
There can be some confusion here sometimes when the debian name and
the original name differ e.g. for the man package the original src
package is called man_db not man. Also there can be some complications
when one debian src package creates several debian packages.

In the case of the debian source package this is both the the debian
src and .deb package combined. You can install it and the use the
debian.rules makefile to recreate itself. It is different from Linus`
source release because it includes debian.rules etc. and some patches -
ppp2.2 and accounting for example. I suspect there might be a .diff
file somewhere but is probably only useful for creating newer
packages.

Hope this makes things clearer.

alvar

PS: Is it Debianized or Debianised?

-- 
Alvar Bray

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