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Applixware / Packaging Proprietary Software



On Packaging Proprietary Software for Debian Systems

Problem:

While Debian users usually support the open-source software approach
as documented in the DFSG they sometimes have software needs that are
not satisfied by such software. So they have two options: dump Debian
completely for this application or install proprietary software on a
Debian system in order to get their task done. In the first case this
isn't a problem of Debian anymore. In the second case it might be a
good idea to use Debian's powerful packaging software to manage the
proprietary software.

Approaches:

a) alien. Alien allows  foreign  packages to be installed under the
   debian package manager. It can use a human-generated diff file in
   order to provide special information that cannot be generated form
   the original non-.deb file.

b) an installer package (as done with netscape). When the installer
   package is installed it accesses the file containing the
   proprietary software.

c) distribute a program that creates the package(s) from the
   proprietary software's distribution medium.

My problem:

I recently bought ApplixWare 4.3.7. It is distributed as 13
.rpm-files and contains support for three languages. So in order to
create proper Debian packages I have to create dependencies between
this packages. The RPM package names are too short, I wanted to rename
them.


Advantages/Disadvantages of the approaches (incomplete ...):
a)
+ no extra package for each proprietary software needed
- uses debmake
- I didn't find a way to rename the packages

b)
- getting the location of the file with the proprietary software is 
  clumsy
- supporting multiple parts is difficult

c)
+ complete dependency processing possible
+ renaming of packages possible
- yet another method


My solution:

I created a package that provides a Makefile for building the
applixware packages from the original Applixware CD. ./debian/rules
can be run in two modes: 

When APPLIXWARE_CD is not set, a package called
make-applixware-packages is build. This package installs the contents
of the source archive (with some modifications) into
/usr/src/make-applixware-packages/. This directory the contains a
Makefile that can be used to build the packages.

When APPLIXWARE_CD is set, it has to point to
the directory where the CD is mounted. ./debian/rules creates all
applixware packages including make-applixware-packages.

You can get the package source from
http://www.sax.de/~sr1/applixware_4.3.7-0.tar.gz .

Conclusion:

The approach works for me. I think it has advantages over the other
approaches. 

I want to know what you think about the whole thing. (Remember to look
at the package source code first, it might explain things better that
I did here.)



	Sven
-- 
Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>
http://www.sax.de/~sr1/


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