Re: "AOL-level help request": Packaging drivers that require kernel/pcmcia-cs source
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 06:13:58PM -0500, Bryan-TheBS-Smith wrote:
> Hello. My name is Bryan "TheBS" Smith of AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.
> We're the Linux-WLAN guys and have released drivers for Intersil-based
> wireless LAN cards. I'm almost completely new to Debian both as a user
> and a packager, but have been quite impressed so far coming from the
> RedHat/RPM world.
Don't take this the wrong way, but the best thing to do is often to let
someone else do the Debian packaging. Keeping up with Debian's policies and
methods can be a big project unto itself, and you can save a lot of time by
delegating packaging responsibilities to a Debian developer.
> First off, again, I'm kinda confused on where to begin (yeah, like you
> haven't heard that before, I know ;-). Is dh_make where I should start
> (our package is just a tarball)? Heck, I'm just trying to find the
> "equivalent" to a RedHat SPEC file, the --bb/--rebuild options, etc...
> (yes, I know, dpkg is _much_more_flexible_ than RPM/SPEC ;-).
As usual, the best place to start looking is with an example from someone
else's work. Check out the PCMCIA packages, for instance, which require
kernel sources in order to build. There is a convention for kernel module
packages that build this way, so that when the user builds their custom
kernel, the modules are built along with it.
Essentially, you deposit a tarball in /usr/src, and the user is expected to
extract it when they build their kernel, signalling that it should be
included in the build. make-kpkg then runs scripts in the unpacked tree to
build the modules at the appropriate time.
--
- mdz
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