Re: FOUND IT!!! was Re: Problems with dselect...
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Santiago Vila wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Dale Scheetz wrote:
>
<< trimmed out message bloat >>
> > Also, it isn't clear that the predepends is needed at all.
>
> I assume the maintainer asked debian-devel before adding the dependency.
> You may ask the maintainer about the reason.
>
I'll put it on my TODO list ;-)
> > I tried to modify the .deb file by extracting the control file, changing
> > the pre-depends to a depends and then 'ar -r dpkg-http....deb
> > control.tar.gs' to put the control file back into the .deb. The problem is
> > that dpkg-deb now complains that the file is not a debian archive. Is
> > there some order issue that I messed up? What is the proper order for the
> > elements of a .deb file?
>
> It is already reported as a bug that a .deb may not be built directly by
> using ar, so this is known.
>
> You may try to use standard tools, like dpkg-deb.
> The dpkg-repack tool may help also.
It's easier to just rebuild the package from source as an NMU for the CD.
Can dpkg-deb be coerced to just put the elements back into the ar archive,
or do I have to create a debian/tmp directory properly populated for
building?
> > For me, the simpler solution was to move perl to the 'base' section. This
> > causes it to be unpacked before the packages that depend upon it, and I
> > can start with a base install and select all of the packages on the CD and
> > the installation successfully runs to completion in one pass!
>
> I guess this should be also solved by using a dselect method that
> does package ordering.
Yes, I noted that the apt method seems to have package ordering, although
I haven't tried it yet. I intended to try it for testing bo => slink
upgrades, but I haven't gotten there yet.
My goal in this effort was, however, to produce a CD that could be
installed by the most clueless user without having to know "the 20 tricks
for installing Debian". I wanted something that would install easily with
the most clumsy method available, knowing that the other methods would
then have no problems. The cd method is the most likely one to be chosen
under these circumstances, given that they will have the cd in their hands
at the time.
Even though it has a couple of bugs, pkg-order was indespensible in
arriving at that goal, and I thank Manoj very much for his work on this
package. Dispite getting the dependencies satisfied, there were other
issues, like the perl package that got in the way of that goal. I am very
pleased to have found solutions to all the "little" problems that I have
found, so far.
Creating an "Unofficial" CD is clearly "swimming upstream" given the
current misconception that the Official CD is somehow superior to all
other products. But there seems to be a market for the single CD release,
so I feel compelled to make the attempt. For maximum acceptance, as
many of the paths for failure as can be found, should be removed from the
CD. Time will tell whether or not I have been successful.
Thanks for the help,
Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-
aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769
Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road
e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308
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