Unofficial Debian package management
I make use of software that, for one reason or another, is not included
in Debian proper, like Mplayer, Mjpegtools, etc.
I want to avoid, for now, the complexities of creating my own .deb
packages, so I compile from the original sources and then use the
excelent, simple stow technique to make the software available on the
system.
Although this works well and enables me to keep a clean system, it
also forces me to constantly check manually for new versions, keep
little scripts around with the compilation parameters for each package,
and all the other hassles you never go through when you let apt do its
thing.
Given that a large number of these packages are already packaged in
binary form for Debian in private repositories, I would like to make
them apt-gettable on my system *but* still keep them separate from the
"Debian official" software.
"man dpkg" shows an interesting option, -root. If this works as
expected, it could be used to install .debs without "contaminating" the
system.
Has anyone been using this option? Could you share your experience?
Still, I wouldn't be able to use apt-get to install the packages, since
it would have to "know" to pass dpkg the -root option for these packages
alone.
Can anybody see how else I could install unofficial .debs from private
repositories, with an ease as close to "apt-get install package" as
possible *but* keep them separate from the main Debian software within
the system?
Thanks for any comments.
--
Carlos Sousa
http://vbc.dyndns.org/
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