Re: Problem with binary package and dupload

[Zed Pobre <zed@moebius.interdestination.com>]

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On 9 Mar 1998, James Troup wrote:

> Zed Pobre <zed@moebius.interdestination.com> writes:
> > No.  It's a binary-only package.  There is no debian/rules file
> > available for either of those programs to use.
> 
> Umm, so write one.  Take a look at another binary-only package from
> non-free (e.g. ines), to see how it's done.  Fudging things by hand is
> going to get you nowhere.

    *stare*.  I must have seriously misunderstood what debian/rules and
such does.  I was under the impression that you used it as a wrapper for
configure/make when you were compiling source code, which is exactly
something I can't do here. 
    ...
    Okay, I just downloaded the source to ines.  I sort of see what you
mean, and it kind of terrifies me.  The ines package was a few files, and
two binaries to be copied to their respective locations.  Since I'm
already late, let me verify the debian/rules procedure and bail:
    
   - Clear about 500 meg free somewhere.
   - Use the debhelper scripts to set up the package building
     location.
   - Make a single rule in debian/rules to do a cp -a of the tar.gz
     directories to the appropriate area
   - Do the chmod/file deletions again from inside debian/rules
   - Use the debhelper scripts to build the package
   - Exit make.
    
   And from there use dpkg-buildpackage and go make dinner or find a
book to read.


> Umm, why have you not got a debian/changelog?  A debian source package
> as a *minimum* must have a debian/changelog and debian/rules; I really
> don't see why you don't want to create these files.

    Because I misunderstood debian source package to mean the tar.gz
files that contain the source code.  Which is why none of this has
been working.  I've been setting up .deb files more or less by hand
because the implication in the manuals was (by virtue of only dealing
with source code packages) that the fancy utilities weren't meant to
be used for this kind of thing and that you were supposed to do a
dpkg-deb on a constructed binary tree.  Oops.  I made the changelog by
hand and put it in usr/doc/iraf/changelog.Debian, and copied the
salient portions to the .changes file, and made the modifications from
there.
    Which explains why everyone kept bashing me over the head with
"Why aren't you using dpkg-genchanges" when I kept explaining that it
was a binary package.  Binary packages use them too.  I think that if
I survive this experience, I'm going to write up and submit a new
section or two to the developers reference manual.

    Thanks for your pointer on the binary package.  I didn't go
looking for source on them because I didn't expect binary-only
packages to *have* source packages...

=============================================================================
Zed Pobre  <zcp@po.cwru.edu>  |  PGP key on servers, fingerprint on finger
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