RE: .diff question
On 14-Dec-98 Fernando Sanchez wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm packaging ocaml, a ml-type language interpreter and compiler,
> and everything works ok but I have two questions, I hope quite easy to
> answer:
>
> First, to compile ocaml I need to call "make install" (in 'rules' file) in
> the following way for it to install binaries where it has to:
>
> $(MAKE) install BINDIR=`pwd`/debian/tmp/usr/bin \
> LIBDIR=`pwd`/debian/tmp/usr/lib/ocaml MANDIR=`pwd`/debian/tmp/usr/man/man1
>
> of course everything works fine, but this way no change is made to original
> Makefiles and it's not reflected in .diff file generated with source
> package. In Debian-policy it is stated that every change which is made to
> sources in order to install properly on Debian systems should be reflected
> in the .diff file and I don't know if it's very important or will be ok if I
> compile this way.
>
> I can arrange it to have a totally complete .diff but this way it's much
> easier and 'cleaner', IMO. What should I do?
>
This is completely fine as you describe it.
>
> Second question; after dpkg-buildpackage, I call lintian -v -i foobar.changes
> and it returs the following error:
>
> E: ocaml: script-without-interpreter usr/lib/ocaml/camlheader_ur
> N: This file starts with the #! sequence that identifies scripts, but it
> N: does not name an interpreter.
>
> That file starts with #! and it's not a script; in fact, camlheader_ur
> contains only this string and nothing else and is used by some other ocaml
> libraries. Is this interpreted as a fatal error and does it prevent me from
> contributing it to Debian, or is not too much important?
>
You need to report this to the lintian maintainer so your package will not
generate this error. lintian is a checker, it does not stop apps from coming
into Debian. Think of it like compiler errors and warnings -- best to fix
them, but not necessarily deadly.
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