Okay, this is my 3rd package, now I need help...
My immediate question:
I need to build a dual binary (a runtime and a development)
package from a single source package, called "wcstools",
which I am creating with dh_make and dpkg-buildpackage.
I've seen various references to how these should be "built
in debian/wcstools and debian/wcstools-dev" instead of
just in "debian/tmp" -- but I *haven't* found out how to
make that happen. Is there something else I should be
reading, or have I missed the section in what I have read
(which is the Debian Policy, Debian NMG, and Debian
Developer's Reference -- I admit I didn't read them
word-for-word, but I'm fairly certain I would've found this
if it were in there in an easy to find place. Or maybe it's
in front of my nose, I've been wrong before.).
Some background, by way of introduction to me and my
packaging project:
Well, I followed the advice in the NMG and stuck to "single
binary packages" for my 1st & 2nd packages.
Now I'm on #3, though, so that rule doesn't apply anymore.
;-)
What I am doing is creating a set of *unofficial* deb
packages to support a scientific applications suite. For
most of these packages, it should be possible (someday) to
move them into the Debian "main" distribution (DFSG-okay
licensing), although many will require more work than I'm
going to do on this first pass (not compliant with Policy
-- most are large, static-linked packages, and there's
little support from upstream for fixing that). And like it
or not, I'm on a tight deadline, so I'm only going to try
stuff I think I can learn in time.
I've read (briefly) the Policy document, the New
Maintainer's Guide, and the Developer's Reference. I still
feel like there's a lot of information that probably seemed
too obvious to the writer to mention, but which is
nevertheless confusing if you don't have the same
experiences.
Perhaps obviously, I've been following the NMG approach,
using dh_make and dpkg-buildpackage, and modifying the
upstream Makefile.
Now I need to make two binaries -- a "wcstools" and a
"wcstools-dev" for the "World Coordinate System" tools
package that I'm working on as Deb #3. (The other two,
ds9 and funtools "FITS Users Need Tools", which seem to
have been successful, created only single binary packages).
Which is where the above problem arose.
It is my hope that I can use this opportunity to learn the
Debian package management system and eventually
join Debian and see these packages go into main, but
at this point, I'm just trying to learn the tools. And the
packages that I'm maintaining, are -- almost by definition
-- the ill-behaved ones that don't easily fit the FHS or
Debian policy standards. Therefore, they will require work,
and you'll probably hear more from me about it over time.
;-)
Until that time, my plan is to set up apt-get-able versions
of the unofficial packages, mainly for the benefit my
clients, but world accessible.
There are also whole areas of gcc and make details that I
simply never learned, such as how .so files actually work
(back when I did C programming they either didn't exist or
didn't exist on my platform -- which was MS-DOS, now I use
only Python for development, which is about all I have the
time to pursue). I briefly entertained the idea of making
the libwcs.a file that gets built in wcstools into a
libwcs3.so -- but reading the Shared Libraries section of
the Debian Policy manual cured me of this fantasy. ;-D
And yes, I've checked, of the 50 packages I'm working on,
only about 20 or so already have been packaged for Debian.
Most of the interesting ones haven't been, although some
are available as RPMs (yeah, I could technically use alien
for those, but they would generally install in /usr/local
as a result, AFAIK).
Anyway, nice to meet you, and "yoroshiku".
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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