Re: Ignoramus' Guide to Deb-Make
> 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 was not jumping at you, just Christian :-). Particularly, his connotation
that maintainer should not know policy, the tool should. That's just _wrong_
IMO. If you commit to be a debian maintainer, you should read debian policy
before uploading your package, and check that it conforms.
>
> 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.
Right. I've only recently switched from being a hardline pro-debmake guy :-),
so I understand where you are coming from. I am not totally against new
maintainers using debmake, but I do want them to know that this is not the only
way, and not the best way either.
>
> 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.
Yes, that's my hope. The real solution to the problem is, of course, a tool
that would generate valid rules file from a set of rules. Something like
automake (no, this idea isn't new, Ian is planning to write such a tool).
P.S. I guess this thread mandates me to submit some SGML'ized non-debmake'd
rules files :-)
--
Proudly running Debian Linux! Linux vs. Windows is a no-Win situation....
Igor Grobman igor@debian.org igor@digicron.com
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