handling derived packages
Is there any precedent for handling derived packages? By "derived" I
mean the package can't be put in an apt repository somewhere, but
must be built on-the-fly. Here's an example.
Package "bar" must be derived. The package builder might be put in a
package "foo". If "bar" depends on "foo", I believe apt will try to
download "foo" and "bar", but "bar" doesn't actually exist until "foo"
has been downloaded and configured. Also, apt won't know where "bar"
is after it's created, so "foo" will have to set up a local disc
repository, or drop the file in the cache or something.
So... instead of using an explicit dependency "foo" could, perhaps,
generate "bar" during foo.postinst, and then invoke apt-get or dpkg. But
it seems pretty dicey to invoke the installer from the installer.
Has anyone dealt with this issue? I've seen some jre wrapper packages,
but they merely install the files outside the package system (so dpkg
doesn't actually know about any of the installed files), rather than
packaging the files and then installing them.
b.c.
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