Re: Ignoramus' Guide to Deb-Make

[Will Lowe <harpo@udel.edu>]

Ok.  I see your point.  I'm not trying to encourage people to use deb-make
to package everything.  But I think that most maintainers (like me) start
out with a relatively small package and NO UNDERSTANDING WHATEVER of the
debian packaging system,  other than maybe dpkg -{i,r}.  

I'm not trying to write the "Comprehensive Guide to The Achievement of
Oneness With Dpkg",  but just something that lets people get off the
ground without having to ask a question about every single aspect of
packaging.  I know that it took me about 15 times to get my first package
built,  and I consider myself a competent programmer in several languages.
Mostly the problems were due to things like misplaced spaces and not
understanding what the control file was for.

I've gone to some length to try to explain the basic purpose of each file
and what each field does in the hopes that by reading through them in
normalspeak instead of ProgrammingManualSpeak (which certainly has its
uses) users will begin to understand what's really going on.

I do think,  though,  that there will be a call for systems like deb-make
for a LONG time.  How many people really understand what goes on
underneath a printf() call?  Sure,  lots do,  but thousands who write
thousands of lines of code sure don't,  and that's the sign of a good
implementation.  If we're lucky,  people who are just learning will start
to use deb-make,  and switch over to doing it by hand when they realize
how nifty it really is.  

                     					Will


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|             harpo@udel.edu lowe@cis.udel.edu lowe@debian.org           |
|			http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/		         |
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|               You say "Love is a temple.  Love the higher law."        |
|	        You ask me to enter,  but then you make me crawl.        | 
|	          And I can't be holding on to what you got              |
|	                   When all you got is hurt.                     |
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