[custom] Generalizing building scripts of meta packages

[Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>]

Hi,

I'm currently working on the move from the former packaging method of
Debian-Med meta packages to the Debian-Edu scheme which builds all meta
packages from one source.  I'd like to uses as much as possible common
code which will end up in a cdd-dev package which might be used by all
Custom Debian Distributions.  (I'll check this into alioth once it is up and
running again.)

The first changes I did are regarding gen-control script of debian-edu

Changes to gen-control
  - Use /etc/cdd/sources.list as default sources.list
    If "-s <dist>" is specified /etc/cdd/sources.list.<dist>
    is used.  Otherwise the argument to option -s is used as
    sources.list.
  - /tmp/cdd-apt is used as $aptdir
    The rationale behind this is to keep the cache stored on
    building machine even after cleaning up build directory.
  - The file debian/control.stub is searched for an entry
    "^Package: <cdd>".  If this is found it is used as prefix
    for the packages, so the builded packages are named as
    <cdd>-{task1,task2,task3,...}.  The default cdd remains
    "education-".
  - If there is a common directory a <cdd>-common package is
    builded as well.  In this case a file common/control
    must be provided.

This changes would not require any change in the debian-edu packaging stuff.
I just want to discuss the fact that Building meta packages might depend
from the configuration of cdd-dev (*if* /etc/cdd/sources.list is used).  The
rationale behind this was that when *developing* the packages on different
machines (perhaps offline with a local mirror) you can work nicely and
meta packages are normally architecture "all" - thus no problems with
auto builders are to be expected.  Moreover you are always free to provide
a source.list file for your *final* build of the package while using the
"-s" option as before.

What is your opinion about uding /tmp/cdd-apt to keep the apt-cache?

What do you think about building debian/control for every build instead of
calling gen-control only once and continue with the created debian/control file.

Kind regards

         Andreas.

PS: If you want to get rid of [custom] tagged mails in debian-devel just
    write a comment to #237017.