Re: creating a debian package that doesn't require compiling...
Jeremy Higgs <jhiggs@iprsystems.com> wrote:
[Moving to the debian-mentors mailing list - "Helping newbie
developers".]
>I am trying to create a debian package for RCF (a firewall for
>linux). There is currently a tarball and RPM of the firewall, but not
>a debian package, so I thought I might try and make one!
Always useful :)
>The main file (rc.firewall) is placed into /etc/rc.d/, and the config
>file in /etc. There are also some .tar files that are contained in
>the rcf tarball that are uncompressed and put into directories within
>/etc/firewall/.
>
>I have read the maintainer's guide that is at the Debian
>Documentation Project, but it seems to only cover packages that
>require compiling - which RCF doesn't.
>
>After running dh_make and cd'ing to the debian directory, is there a
>file that allows you to tell dpkg (or whatever is handling the
>package) to put certain files into certain places, and/or do certain
>things? I've looked at the debian/rules files, but that refers to
>compiling from source, and I don't need that!
Just leave out the bits that refer to compiling; packages that don't
require this are just an easier subset. The 'install' target of
debian/rules (or the 'binary-indep' target - 'install' isn't required,
but is often present and is probably in the examples you have) installs
files into debian/tmp [1]. You're likely to have a build target that
does nothing, an install target that installs the configuration file in
debian/tmp/etc and uncompresses the tarballs into
debian/tmp/etc/firewall, and, since you're using dh_make, a binary-indep
target that runs lots of debhelper programs to build the rest of the
package, including dh_installinit which will install rc.firewall in the
right place given suitable prodding.
[1] If you're using debhelper with DH_COMPAT=2, use debian/rcf or
whatever instead of debian/tmp.
Beware of Debian being different from Red Hat-derived distributions; we
use /etc/init.d rather than /etc/rc.d/init.d, and expect packages with
initialization scripts to use update-rc.d.
As well as the New Maintainer's Guide, you should read the Packaging
Manual, which will probably go a long way to answering other questions
you may have.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]
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